YO HOMEY!

MAYOR Bloomberg is famous for – among other things – intimate dinner parties in his Upper East Side townhouse. An evening with Mike might mean 10 or 12 at the dining room table. The rest of us? More like you and your SRO group hunched over the Ikea coffee table with sesame noodles.

The solution? Get thee to a restaurant – they’re looking more and more like the place you wish you could call home.

For Jessica Butt, bobo (181 W. 10th St.; [212] 488-2626), the new offbeat brownstone restaurant in the West Village, is a home away from home. “It feels like you’ve been invited to a classic upscale dinner party there,” says the Forest Hills resident. “It’s gorgeous. The books. The candles. The outdoor garden. You don’t feel like you’re in a restaurant.”

Exactly what owner Carlos Suarez had in mind.

He says that as a student at the University of Pennsylvania, he and his friends would pick up fresh food at Philly’s Italian market and spend the day cooking and listening to music, often until 4 in the morning.

He’s re-created his college days at bobo, where Suarez says the dishes are ones “you’d find in a cookbook,” to continue throwing his “dinner parties.” The upstairs dining room is all Old World elegance: chandeliers next to dramatic red drapes, candles in silver candlesticks, chairs from his own apartment. Suarez has even lined the walls with black-and-white photos of his family.

Leave your pearls at home if your party’s at Allen & Delancey (115 Allen St.; [212] 253-5400), a Lower East Side restaurant that feels like your friend’s once gritty, now glammed-up apartment. Ogle the exposed brick, while you catch up over dinner – albeit one that includes serious dishes such as caviar bone marrow. Restaurant director Glenn Vogt explains its homey feel: “The intent of the design was to reflect the neighborhood, and the neighborhood is residential.” And he’s not talking luxury condos. The shelves, cluttered with books and antiques, and weathered mirror would look at home in the nearby Tenement Museum.

Borough Food & Drink (12 E. 22nd St.; [212] 260-0103) combines shabby chic with ’70s style. During dinner, you feel like you’re in a rustic kitchen with reclaimed woods and a pantry showing off quirky condiments. The post-meal hangout in back takes you straight to Brady-ville, a rec room with a pool-table centerpiece.

Shorty’s.32 (199 Prince St.; [212] 375-8275) in SoHo is like the snug parlor in your crazy great-aunt’s house. Dine on comforting short ribs and strawberry pound cake surrounded by chef/owner Josh Eden’s 21 overhead lamps and textured earth-tone wallpaper. “It’s like my grandmother’s living room,” Eden says.

“It’s easy to be disenchanted by your own apartment after eating at restaurants like these,” says diner Gina Masullo. “But it’s fun to escape and pretend you really can have an apartment like this once in a while.

“Plus, once the Cinderella novelty wears off, at least you don’t have to worry about doing the dishes.”