Sometimes it’s not where you eat but with whom. I might have found Kashkaval too loud, cramped, busy and definitely if my consort and I had wandered in there by ourselves after the theater some night. But we were lured there by friends of his from the year of magical learning, two of whom who happened to be good friends from Paris with our hyper-efficient waitress, and everything was about as good as excess gets.

Until a table opened up, we wedged ourselves at the comfortable bar to be plied with big glasses of wine and fine Mediterranean spreads: chickpea, spicy walnut and excellent black olive, all with warm pita. Once we were wedged at a tiny table where it was easy to talk, five of us shared three fondues: the namesake, made with sheep’s milk cheese; Cheddar and ale, and a classic, with Gruyere and Emmenthaler. We ordered crudite to dunk along with the chunks of baguette and were comped some sausage slices as well, and we got more spreads and bread. The wine kept flowing as wineglasses broke all around us with surprising regularity and little recoil.

From my NYTimes days I remembered the place as a cheese store with takeout and coffee beans, but it’s been transformed with that great bar in the back, a small L-shaped dining room and two very commodious bathrooms, once you get past the display cases in the front. Prices are excellent: The fondue was $10 a person and wines started at $6 a glass, I think but don’t quote me; we just chipped in a tip. Plus it has one hell of a waitress in Emma the friend of the friends from Middle Earth.

856 Ninth Avenue near 56th Street, 212 581 8282.