Stage set for fine dining.

Blu

Avenida de la Paz 57, local I, planta alta

Col. San Angel

Mexico City

Tel.: [phone]

Mon.-Sat., 1 p.m. to 12 a.m.

Sun., 1 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Blu is a good choice for impressing a date or making visitors from Miami or Los Angeles feel right at home. The six-meter-high warehouse ceilings, indoor palm trees and large ferns, the low-hanging fans, the wall-length back-lit bar with symmetrically placed bottles, the dramatically large candles and the small stage for a band playing nondescript background jazz, all have the pleasing effect of making you feel like an extra in an old episode of Melrose Place. Blu is also fun for observing the San Angel yuppie set out on the town, especially when the place fills up and the live music begins around 9:30 p.m. Order a martini (Blu's specialty), sit back and people-watch to your voyeuristic heart's content.

Once you get around to ordering, the food won't disappoint, with a solid and surprisingly non-pretentious menu of fresh Mediterranean-style cuisine.

We started with the exotic-sounding ostrich meat rolls. Ostrich, it turns out, tastes a lot like ... no, not chicken, but lean ground beef, with a hint of the gamy flavor of duck or rabbit. We accompanied that tasty dish with a large steamed artichoke: very fresh and succulent, with a mayonnaise sauce for dipping the leaves.

Other appetizers include favorites like carpaccio, portobello mushrooms, cheese platters and mini-pizzas.

Blu's main dishes are beautifully presented, and the waiters are attentive, but never intrusive. The portions are perfect: neither grotesquely large nor in the bite-size nouveau-cuisine style. By far, the best dishes of the evening were the salmon raviolis with caviar and vodka, the large cheese and spinach raviolis in a meaty pomodoro sauce and the succulent cilantro shrimp. The chicken breast with serrano ham was also quite good, if not as thrilling as the other dishes. The only less-than-excellent choice was the salmon in mustard sauce, which was rather bland--perhaps over-cooked--strange, considering it's pretty difficult to go wrong with salmon.

Four out of five ain't bad, though, and all was forgiven after tasting Blu's light and wonderful sorbets. We were too full to order the restaurant's sinful specialty, Big Mistake, a rich chocolate cake, so the raspberry sorbet in vodka was a perfect end to the meal. I never knew the two ingredients together would taste so delightful, the vodka adding just the right zing to the light, fruity sherbet.

After dinner, relax with a digestivo or espresso and pretend to be the background actor in the latest telenovela. At any moment, the TV stars will enter, and someone will yell "Accion!" Blue-tinted glasses, excessive hair gel, tiny cell phone and sharp clothes are not required, but without one of these props, a casting director might suddenly appear and pull you from the scene.