BAD TIMING, GOOD DINING

JUST in time for the End of Eating As We Know It, along come three – count ’em, three – big, new restaurants sporting unfamiliar, lofty “concepts.” All were set in motion at least a year ago; all opened after the fall of Lehman Bros. None has a chef many New Yorkers have heard of. They’re dead meat, right?

Don’t count on it. Some of our greatest restaurants were born out of the blue in the worst of times. Le Cirque opened in 1974, less than a year before the city almost went bankrupt. Nobu bowed in 1994, when there were 1,561 murders in the five boroughs – compare that to 501 last year.

Our three brave new pioneers – at Vermilion, Shang and Rouge Tomate – might not prove as enduring. But like the original Le Cirque and Nobu, they are true departures from everything else around. In a town where much of even the finest food tastes alike, the adventurous offerings at our pioneering trio taste different – for better or worse.

Except for a few dishes, they’re not that pricey by Manhattan standards and much cheaper than steakhouses, to which diners are inexplicably flocking. In tough times, it seems, some people mistake familiarity for frugality. The trio here offer adventure for a relative pittance. Get it while it lasts.

AT VERMILION

480 Lexington Ave. (46th Street)

212-871-6600

* Cuisine claim: Indian-Latin fusion.

* What it really is: Indian-Latin fusion and Indian.

* Crowd: Well-dressed business types, busier at lunch than dinner.

* Goofiest p.r. statement: The career of gorgeous owner Rohini Dey (PhD) “spans four legs.” (Funny, she looked fine on the mere two she was sporting the day we met her.)

* Price range: Small plates, $8-$20; main dishes, $24-$34.

The 200-seat, two-level eatery’s liabilities start with a stark, colorless design (without a trace of red) and a moronic name (why not just call it “Vermilion” like the celebrated Chicago original)? The Times seems intent on putting it out of business; it ran a wicked review by a writer who is not the paper’s actual critic and a hard-times “news” story built around a dining room that was, unsurprisingly, empty at 5:37 p.m.

But if Double Crown managed to marry the wildly disparate tastes of colonial Britain and its Asian subjects, At Vermilion deserves a chance with two cuisines that actually have a limited affinity through shared use of spices and starches.

In a town full of Indian and Nuevo Latino joints serving bad meat and fish, At Vermilion uses top-flight raw materials appropriate to both cuisines.

Tandoori-baked, churrasco-style skirt steak lit my fire on a bitter night. And it’s at least interesting to experience shredded, Indian-spiced crabmeat inside a crepe made with huitlacoche, the Mexican fungus with a flavor between corn and mushroom.

ROUGE TOMATE

10 E. 60th St.

646-237-8977

* Cuisine claim: SPE (sanitas per escam), Latin for “health through food,” or short for “sourcing, preparation, enhancing” – or something.

* What it really is: Creative, organically focused modern American with tons of woodsy-earthy elements.

* Crowd: Strange mix of East Side fashionistas and frumpy foodies.

* Goofiest p.r. statement: “Venison is served with dried fruit chutney to balance pH levels in the blood.”

* Price range: In the cafe: appetizers, $8-$17, entrees, $16-$29; in the dining room: appetizers, $12-$19, entrees, $21-$39.

On paper, Rouge Tomate – inspired by a Belgian namesake – looked like a howler. It boasts an on-site “culinary nutritionist.” Nothing is grilled or deep fried. The place is so full of itself, it employs two different p.r. companies – one to promote the SPE shtick, one the actual restaurant.

Nor did the location on the old Nicole Fahri store/cafe site in the heart of East Side shopping country bode well for an adventurous launch.

Yet, Rouge Tomate has its act shockingly together. It’s gorgeous, with acres of light wood, luxurious seating and a Scandinavian-inspired mood on two levels. In the main dining room downstairs, a glass-walled kitchen presides over the scene like the bridge of a friendly flying saucer.

The owners smartly dropped a $72-plus prix-fixe-only menu downstairs a week after the opening. Both floors have buzzed ever since.

Holding it all together is executive chef Jeremy Bearman, who was executive sous-chef at DB Bistro Moderne. Dishes are prettily and precisely composed – some too composed. Black cod in rice paper “gets ugly as you eat it,” we observed, when the fish collapsed into a mess of cabbage, kohlrabi and horseradish.

But most choices ring the bell, among them barley and “foraged” mushrooms winterized with black truffle, parmesan and Madeira, as well as my favorite dish: rabbit fleischnacke, where succulent meat is spooled inside chestnut pasta.

Cannelloni of beets and beet leaves with sheep’s milk yogurt, blood orange, pistachio and ice wine vinegar must be the best new $12 dish in town. What an amazing thing, across the street from Barneys.

SHANG

187 Orchard St. (Thompson LES Hotel)

212-260-7900

* Cuisine claim: Global Chinese.

* What it really is: An all-over-the-map, mix ‘n’ match of Chinese, Japanese, Malaysian and American styles and ingredients.

* Crowd: Fashionable chic. They still wear black downtown, especially after 9 p.m. (not open for lunch).

* Goofiest p.r. statement: “Chinese wallpaper with erotica designs more than 600 years old creates a tantalizing escape.”

* Price range: Soups, salads and vegetables, $10-$16; seafood and meat, $12-$25.

* Of our three pioneers, only Shang has a “name” chef: Hong Kong-born Susur Lee, a colossus of the Toronto dining scene. He’s been honored by food magazines and he “boldly matched TV’s ‘Iron Chef’ Bobby Flay platter for platter to a culinary draw,” we are informed.

But Lee is no globetrotter. He’s literally moved into the new Thompson LES Hotel, where Shang – styled in hip-inn-generic with huge round booths and walnut tables under orange chandeliers – occupies the sprawling, 130-seat mezzanine.

He can sound as if New Yorkers never set foot outside the house – that “traditional seasonings and sauces are very different in Hong Kong than Taiwan” will not come as news to anyone aware that “Chinese” cuisine is actually many cuisines even inside China, much less in its myriad mutations worldwide.

But most dishes blow away philosophical quibbles. I’ll take Lee’s word for it that juicy, fiery jerk chicken with soy and a batch of Asian spices is what Chinese-born Jamaicans eat.

Singapore slaw is a tall, pyramidal fantasia of spices, flowers and nuts anchored by rice vermicelli and drenched in salted plum dressing; the onslaught of textures enhances the flavor fireworks. Octopus sliced paper-thin with tomatillo and tomatoes, fired by chili oil-based pennywort relish underneath, is one of the most thrilling dishes I’ve had in the past year.

And, unlike Asian eateries that traffic in tapioca-yuzu soup desserts, Shang offers meal-enders with one foot firmly in the Western camp.