Restaurant Review - Catch in Meatpacking District - NYTimes.com TWO tyros in Wall Street livery walk into a bar; can't decide what to drink. "Champagne?" one hazards. The other shrugs. Nevertheless, a bottle is summoned. There is no toast, nothing to celebrate - yet. The women are just starting to eddy. This is early evening at Catch, a restaurant with a department store's dimensions and a nightclub's twitchy heart. It opened in October in the meatpacking district, which seems to breed such leviathans. You will not find Catch at its official street address. In its stead stands Sephora, the cosmetics emporium with LED backlighting and a go-go-bar soundtrack. The entrance is around the corner, a bland door that leads to a nearly pitch-black hallway and unmarked elevators. As night wears on, a velvet rope appears. Upstairs, the restaurant unfurls over two floors. On a third is a rooftop lounge, sheathed in glass and stocked with shimmery people. Faux "ghost signs," murals weathered to look like hand-painted ads on urban facades, are blazoned across exposed-brick walls. Elsewhere are mosaic tiles, veined marble, lampshades akin to inverted colanders and bare silver-tipped bulbs mounted like shower heads. It is a theme park with no discernible theme. Can you eat well at a restaurant with 260 seats, bored hostesses, incoherent décor and a party-platter-friendly menu primed for franchising? Confoundingly, yes. But first you must navigate the menu. It reads like a catalog: you may order crab by the pound ($60), seafood by the tower ($48, $72 and $115), oysters and Krug as a gift set ($100). Choose your own adventure with mix-and-match fishes and sauces ($26 to $40), and throw in a steak while you're at it ($48). Somewhere behind all this is a chef: Hung Huynh, the winner of the third season of the televised cooking competition "Top Chef." On that show, Mr. Huynh was chided for making food that was technically flawless but lacking soul. Helming a big-box restaurant is hardly a rebuttal. Still, there are glimmers of Mr. Huynh's personality here, in the portly yet delicate scallop dumplings daubed with caviar and sluiced with vichyssoise ($15), and the D.I.Y. Vietnamese-style lettuce wraps with crunchy tendrils of sweet potato and sake-sautéed chicken ($14). Pot stickers engorged with beef Bourguignon make you sigh for what might have been ($16). Sneak a touch more broth in there and they could be the best soup dumplings in town. The scallops are monstrous specimens, expertly cooked despite their girth, blackened and caramelly on one side and blushing on the other ($32). A whole snapper, deep-fried and fluffy, is titanic, a beast of the deep, enough to feed four ($72). The waiter will offer to fillet it, but please - sucking the bones is half the fun. Ignore the accompanying sauce, which is closer in spirit to syrup. Certain dishes come with quotation marks. Tuna tartare molded over crunchy oblongs of rice was all the rage in Los Angeles last decade ($15). It still delights. Likewise crispy shrimp with a stinging mayonnaise, which Nobu Matsuhisa has been doing for a quarter-century ($18). The sushi is surprisingly serious. It is best straight up, the fish cool and unadorned against barely warm rice ($4 to $7 a piece). The rolls ($10 to $16) are oppressed by condiments and that eternal interloper, avocado. Desserts are congenial and unthreatening, save for a chocolate soufflé that on arrival is stabbed with a scoop of peanut-butter ice cream, so that the roof caves in and the flavors become one ($12). Catch has its pleasures, but the bill is a cold shower, and when you leave, no one meets your eye. You paid your fare, you got your ride. They are already moving on, to the next wave of high rollers, to the next outpost in the works (hello, South Beach). You can't help feeling slightly used. Catch 21 Ninth Avenue (entrance on West 13th Street), (212) 392-5978, emmgroupinc.com/restaurants/catch. RECOMMENDED Scallop dumplings; sake chicken lettuce "cups"; crunchy rice cakes; crispy shrimp; scallop and cauliflower; crispy whole snapper; sushi by the piece. CREDIT CARDS All major cards. HOURS Monday to Wednesday, 5:30 to 11:30 p.m.; Thursday to Saturday, 5:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m.; Sunday, 5:30 to 11 p.m. WHEELCHAIR ACCESS Ground-floor entrance is level with sidewalk. Elevators provide access to both floors. Restrooms are handrail-equipped.