Suba (CLOSED)

The street-floor lounge is no more noteworthy than any other trendy downtown bar. But descend the steel staircase to the subterranean dining room, and you're confronted with what is either the weirdest or the coolest restaurant in town.

This is a claustrophobe's nightmare: a vaulted windowless room with a dining platform cantilevered over a shallow moat. Lights glow eerily against the water, flickering and fading on the mirror-slick surface. Techno music thumps out an uncompromising beat from powerful speakers. And the noise of scores of trendoids chowing down echoes off the damp brick walls.

The strangeness doesn't end with the decor. The food is equally controversial: Either you love it or you hate it.

Management describes it as French-influenced Spanish cuisine. Certainly, some preparations bring to mind particularly inventive tapas. But beyond that, who can tell? Some combinations are tasty—like the toasted cheese with serrano ham and green apples, which appeared on a recent menu. But others incorporate too many tastes: rack of lamb with black olive and sun-dried tomato crust served in a red-pepper and tomato sauce with bacon-wrapped dates or a dessert that mixes a flourless chocolate cake with a coffee and avocado shake.

Still, the place has developed a following, although many probably come more for the scene than the food. And if those brick walls start crowding in too much, you can always repair upstairs or to the second bar another level down.

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Lower East Side restaurants, New York restaurants, Manhattan restaurants, Spanish restaurants