Steak and stogies

My father smoked a cigar every night until my mother ordered new curtains for the house and banned his Corona Grandes forever. She hated the rich, pungent smell of the cigars and never would have picked one up to smoke it herself; to her, cigars were masculine, coarse, and nasty.

That memory returned to me as I sat in the Cigar Box & Bistro one Saturday night, dipping an ice-cold shrimp into cocktail sauce and watching two suburban couples settle into the comfortable chairs and sofas in the lounge area to the left of my table. The group had made a stop at the glass-walled humidor room just off the entrance to this dark, narrow dining room, where they had purchased three cigars from a selection of more than 60 varieties neatly displayed in their boxes in this closet-size room. The two gentlemen each took one, sat back in their chairs, and immediately lit up, leaving one for the lady in a baby blue cotton dress with festive appliqués. She at first awkwardly maneuvered the long cigar, but she was game and, before long, happily puffed away just like Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde.

I don't know what I expected when I made my reservation to dine at the Cigar Box, but the downtown restaurant is unlike any other dining establishment in the city. It's one part old-fashioned saloon, one part intimate steakhouse, one part clubhouse for people who like to smoke.

To my surprise, a couple of my friends refused to join me for dinner at the Cigar Box because the name scared them off: "Doesn't it reek of cigar smoke?" asked one friend. "The smell of cigars makes me lose my appetite."

It was their loss. The dining room doesn't smell smoky at all, even though heavy glass ashtrays sit on every table. But there are fresh, dewy roses in glass vases too. And although I haven't had a cigar in years, I was longing for one by the time I finished dinner and the restaurant's featured singer, Al Latta, turned on his karaoke-style background music machine and launched into "Luck Be a Lady Tonight." Yes, by modern restaurant standards, the Cigar Box may seem politically incorrect -- not only because of the smoking, but also because the place is unabashedly masculine. The hostess and waitresses are all young and beautiful. And from my table, I could watch the statuesque bartender, a dead ringer for 1960s TV star Julie Newmar, shaking martinis into chilled glasses at a long, mirrored bar decorated with a painting of a naked woman, in profile, puffing on a stogie.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a joint, nor is it remotely racy, even though it's located next to the popular showgirl club Ziegfield's. I would even say that the Cigar Box has a kind of offbeat elegance about it. The service is gracious; the ambience is even a shade formal. It's the kind of dark, cozy dining room my parents would have loved -- a place where diners relax, starting out with a good stiff cocktail and maybe an antipasto plate (Italian ham, salami, capocollo, and pepperoni with cheeses, olives, roasted red peppers, and chilled shrimp; $9.95) or grilled eggplant stuffed with ricotta cheese and spinach ($5.95).

The place is so dimly lit I had to borrow a little flashlight from my waitress to see the menu, which is primarily Italian in offerings, with garlicky pasta and chicken dishes alongside the grilled steaks and fish. I decided to try an appetizer from my youth -- a cold shrimp cocktail ($6.95) -- just as six teenagers, all decked out in their prom formals, arrived and were escorted to a back table. Fresh-faced and glowing, the girls wore long dresses and flamboyant corsages and the boys, each with military-issue crew cuts, matching tuxedos. They were the fanciest-dressed customers in the place that night; the rest of the tables were filled with couples in rather ordinary pantsuits, jeans, Sans-A-Belt slacks, and cotton shirts.

In another time and place, customers would have dressed up to go a restaurant like the Cigar Box. The room has the feel of a restaurant that's been around since the war years, but food, beverages, and cigars are a relatively new incarnation for this building, which housed various small business (a wallpaper store, a florist, a graphics firm) for decades until the Cigar Box revived it with a kind of flair that this particular stretch of Grand Avenue hasn't seen in a long time.

The long, brass-railed bar filled up quickly, mostly with couples, some just drinking, others dining. The entire dining room was packed by 7:30.

"On weekends, you really need a reservation to get in," confided the server, setting a chilled martini glass in front of me with four fat shrimp perched along the edges. "It's pretty popular."

The place obviously has its regulars. As Al Latta fussed over his music machine, a cordless microphone in one hand and a cigarette in the other, he waved to familiar faces. "You're gonna sing 'Fly Me to the Moon' tonight, aren't you?" pleaded one woman as the hostess escorted her to a table. Latta, who has performed in Vegas and Atlantic City lounges over the past two decades, smiled broadly. "Of course," he said, snubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray on my table, barely a foot away from his stack of electronic gear. Latta has a wonderful smoky voice and a classic saloon singer's style reminiscent of Sinatra and Tony Bennett. No one seems to care that he isn't backed by a real trio of musicians, that he controls the volume on his electronically produced music by himself. Latta sings to the crowd here as if he were on stage at Carnegie Hall. Or the Flamingo.