The pretty good: Irving Mill, where we walked in bedraggled and overburdened from the Greenmarket and Barnes & Noble for lunch on Saturday and where we were given a booth big enough to sleep in with all our belongings. The food was almost beside the point — the place is so overdesigned right down to the bathrooms I’m surprised Danny Meyer isn’t pulling a Rebecca Charles. But I liked my peekytoe crab salad ($14 appetizer) with frisee, fingerlings, beets, leeks and crosnes even though the dominant flavor was salt rather than the promised truffle vinaigrette. I also liked my consort’s less-than-succulent braised rabbit with olives, garlic sausage and potato puree even though it, too, seemed to be absent a menu-marquee flavor (rosemary). The bread and butter were as copious as the wine pours were abstemious (the $9 verdejo was underwhelming, the $9 Bordeaux better). Service was a bit pretentious, but it is competing with the best restaurant in St. Louis. WIGB? Bob said yes for me on the comment card, but on reexamining the bill I see the rabbit was $22 on the menu and $24 on the receipt. Not so sure now. 116 East 16th Street, 212 254 1600.

The promising: Pamplona, where one drawback beyond the risky business with the credit cards is the noise level. Six of us were lucky enough to score a back booth, so we could sorta hear what three of us were saying at one time, but I guess that’s what you get when the draw is imaginative, well-executed nueva Espanol. Food went by in a blur, but I know I tasted good chickpea fries, salt cod croquettes and salt-cured tuna, way-above-average patatas bravas and lively crab lasagne with salsa verde, among other dishes. The free-flowing tempranillo was fine, too. WIGB? Cautiously, given the carelessness with credit card numbers and the fact that I just looked at the purloined menu and see that it advises a 20 percent service charge tacked onto bills for parties of six or more — if I dredge up that telltale receipt and find we all tipped twice, we will not exactly be happy. 37 East 28th Street, 212 213 2328.

The boring: Market Table in the West Village, where a friend/professional eater in town for a few days to soak up New York at its most exciting was lured by this fool too lazy to schlep to more promising destinations. The service was beyond personable and friendly, but my $19 crab cake sandwich was a snore begging for livelier tartar sauce and less rubbery bun. All the menu was a snooze, though, to the point that we briefly considered decamping to Pearl on first scanning it. But it was raining, so we stuck around for good bread and butter, good gruner (a glass going for what the same bottle sells for at Gotham) and a borderline-acceptable noise level. My friend was happy with her very straightforward soup and the side of sauteed greens she persuaded the waitress to bring, and with the bathrooms, which she said are way far above those in the town where she is sentenced to serve. She also got her New York’s worth yukking it up over the maple syrup for sale in the weird “market” at the entryway. How many ways can you say “buyer beware new-age idiocy”?