There’s a strong argument to be made for going to an ubercool restaurant on a Monday night.  Blissfully, there’s no storm surge at the door and instead of being catty, the hostess is charming, and the coat attendant accommodating – and before you’ve even taken a pre-dinner seat at the bar, you’re feeling cared for – and yes, even cool for having the smarts to be at Bette on a night when it’s filled with Europeans on vacation and tables of well-dressed men and the requisite Sex in the City-like girls, as well as the few single diners on the mezzanine, comfortable with their Blackberries and the inevitable coddling which occurs when a restaurant staff is relaxed enough to be both professional and solicitous.

From the street, you might miss Bette, with its single bronze plaque announcing its name.  You might walk right on by as we had for several months.  You might be looking for the hubbub which has always lurked around Amy Sacco’s other ubercool ventures, the nightclub/lounges Lot 61 and Bungalow 8.  Blissfully, Bette on a calm night is the antithesis of those stress-inducing clubs where everyone’s jostling for position, drink tickets and further notoriety.  Instead, Bette (named for Ms. Sacco’s mother and pronounced like Ms. Davis, and not Ms. Midler) resembles a speakeasy – that is, if one recalls the speakeasy origins of the Stork and the 21 Club.  To walk into Bette is to be enveloped in a space warmed by smoked glass, low lighting and a buzz of contentment.  There’s a kind of supper club glamour about the room, as if you might well encounter Margo Channing and Addison DeWitt tossing back martinis while aiming jibes at Eve Harrington.  The cocktails are defiantly retro, as is the food, comprising hits from the past such as iceberg wedges and Baked Alaska, and much of it works well on the palate.  Take, for example, the much-discussed truffled french fries.  At $14 a serving, that’s some audacity in charging what is, for much of the planet, a month’s salary for a wooden salad bowl filled with fried potatoes.  But then again, those frites are delicious and addictive: salty, crispy, and yes, truffled: the sort of food which makes you feel good while eating (provided you don’t think of the politics therein).

Which, in the end, is what Bette does best: make you feel good.  Even the bathrooms are chic and stylish – and the whole place reminds you of that one very good reason why you came to New York in the first place: to hang with kids as cool and smart as you are.