325 W. 51st Street (8th & 9th Aves.)
212-399-9291

It's recruiting season at law firms across the country. Second-year law students are being flown from coast to coast to interview for their next summer job, which will usually lead to a job right after graduation. In New York, it's customary for the firm to send a candidate out to a nice lunch with a couple of junior associates such as myself.

Today it was Vice Versa, a modern-looking Italian on West 51st Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. The dining room is sleek, with clean lines and muted grays and browns throughout, and well lit through the full-length windows in the back surrounding a modestly planted courtyard.

Vice Versa is a new restaurant that has quickly become a lunch favorite at my firm. It's close to the office, it's nice to look at, and it's expensive enough that you wouldn't necessarily go there on your own dime without being so expensive that it offends the sensibilities of the powers that be. Service is attentive and fast without being intrusive. In short, Vice Versa is to all appearances the ideal mid-interview recruiting lunch spot.

The only problem is, the food isn't that great. My two lunchmates each began with the mixed salad, which you'd think would be tough to screw up. But the poor law student we were with almost had an anxiety attack trying to eat hers without making a mess or looking like a slob, because the greens hadn't been cut down to a manageable size. I opted for an artichoke and calamari appetizer, which was also disappointing. Some rings of squid were tossed together with a few artichoke scraps and deep fried into something that strongly resembled a county-fair funnel cake on a bed of shredded radicchio. The texture of the squid - which was perfectly cooked, I admit - came through nicely, but the artichoke apparently couldn't stand up to the hot oil long enough to keep pace with the raw seafood, and the only thing it contributed was an unpleasant, burnt-tasting bitterness. The whole affair was greasy and underseasoned. In light of the numerous other artichoke dishes on the menu that day, I concluded that my "antipasto" was probably just a ploy to bump up the price of a small serving of calamari and get rid of the kitchen's artichoke trimmings with one stroke.

The pasta was another mixed bag. Two of us opted for a seasonal offering of pumpkin ravioli with butter and sage. Classic autumn comfort food - I've made this one myself a few times. The pumpkin filling was perfectly smooth, if a little bland. The pasta itself was a bit gummy, though, and the sage - a sprig of whole leaves tossed essentially raw on the center of the plate - was woody and unpleasant. Not having been infused into the thick, nearly clogged butter sauce, the sage was totally wasted, and what remained was essentially a plate of pumpkin puree with an equivalent quantity of butter.

Dessert was refreshing, though. There were several offerings, but we each opted for the hazelnut-vanilla panna cotta, a clever two-layer dessert with simple, authentic flavors. The hazelnut was a bit understated but still earthy and warm, the vanilla was clean and aromatic, and the custard had the perfect gelatinous panna cotta consistency. Vice Versa also serves a few small cookies with dessert and coffee, ranging from biscotti to chocolate-covered crisps, which are not overly sweet and a pleasant way to end the meal.

I can understand why people at my firm like to do lunches at Vice Versa, but I'm just not impressed. With so many genuinely super restaurants in the neighborhood, this one feels too much like style over substance.