Elegant New Cafe With Varied Fare

Restaurants reviewed on this page on Friday are rated both for their food (four stars to none) and for their atmosphere, service and decor (four triangles to none).

★ ▲▲▲ Feathers on Fifth, 24 Fifth Avenue at Ninth Street, GR 3‐6400.

This plush new Greenwich Village cafe restaurant in the Fifth Avenue Hotel looks and feels very Upper East Side. The menu is diverse and offers plenty of variety both in price and style. But the main reason to stop here is the setting: elegance and a vantage point looking out on the quietude of lower Fifth.

Go elsewhere for a meal of distinction. But if you are in the neighborhood and want to eat a sandwich in peace, Feathers is worth trying. Though the “special foot long hot dog with chili” is no longer than 9 inches, it is a tasty dish. The very red and very cold gazpacho served in a big goblet is pretty and forcefully spiced. If you prefer more texture to your gazpacho, the extreme smoothness of this soup may, however, put you off.

For those in a particularly festive mood, the restaurant will flambe a baked Alaska for two in cherries jubilee sauce for $3.75 without any advance notice.

Some of the more hightoned entries on the menu confirm one's, initial impression that Feathers is more for fun than connoisseurship. The beef stroganoff was as dull as it usually is. Veal piccata was plain tough; so were some baked clams.

It is more difficult to find fault with the atmosphere and setting at Feathers. Nevertheless, one problem should be corrected immediately. Pay toilets are an abomination anywhere and certainly have no place as part of a restaurant.

Feathers serves lunch and dinner seven days a week. Prices range from around $2.75 for a sandwich to $8.25 for steak. Major credit cards are accepted.

Chateau Tokyo, 164 West 48th Street, 765‐8183.

People worried about the current successes of Japanese business in the West may take some comfort from this catastrophic attempt, to merge the cuisines of Nippon and France under one roof.

That a Japanese chef with professional experience in France should offer both caneton a l'orange and yakitori on his menu does not violate any God‐given law. In fact, the idea has a certain exotic interest, which is why diners in the theater district should be warned to stay away from what seems at first to be a promising new place.

Service is awkward. Waiters seem to function in no tongue. Great confusion arose over, ordering the house drink, which is served, in a hollow white Buddha, which, it develops, can be retained as a souvenir.

The rest is merely spotty. There is a steak au poivre of unbelievable crudity—peppercorns not crushed, the meat tough. A shrimp‐stuffed avocado was not ripe. Coquilles St. Jacques (scallops) came in a passable Mornay sauce. The yakitori (brochette of chicken) was a perfunctory but welcome break from the dismal run of dishes.

Virtually no desserts were available. Espresso, listed on the menu, was nonexistent. A carafe of red wine had clearly been left out in the air for hours to wilt.

In addition to all this, several dishes arrived only lukewarm. The masochistic bargain hunter can at least point to the fact that a prix fixe dinner including hors d'oeuvre, soup, vegetable, entree, dessert and coffee averages about $5 per person.

The restaurant, which inherited a false Tudor decor from the previous tenant, serves lunch and dinner on weekdays and opens for business at 3 P.M. on weekends. American Express and Diners Club cards accepted.