When a restaurant offers a flight of three wine ice creams, diners get a pretty clear idea of where its priorities lie. But how could it be otherwise with Morrells, the second venture into restaurant territory by one of the city's most famous wine merchants?Its tiny parent, Morrells Cafe, next to the company's wine store in Rockefeller Center, found a successful formula offering wine-based cuisine and a long list of wines by the glass. Michael Haimowitz, the chef, expands on the original concept in a spacious dining room with a cafe and bar up front. For the first time he has enough room to turn around.

Wine is the thing. Mr. Haimowitz works it into at least three-quarters of the dishes on the menu. A splash of Madeira adds its distinctive smoky sweetness to a chowder of spring mushrooms with tiny bits of smoked bacon. Foie gras with pistachio and golden raisins is iced with a layer of gewürtztraminer gelée. Daily specials include chicken in riesling, seafood soup with sauvignon blanc, boneless rib-eye steak with cabernet syrup and osso bucco braised in Chianti. Somehow a little sherry manages to sneaks its way into the curing process for Austrian speck, served with pine nuts and grana Padano cheese.

The wine-food relationship and a freewheeling California style come naturally to Mr. Haimowitz, who cooked at the Lark Creek Inn in Northern California and Granita in Malibu.

He dotes on fresh produce, like the pea shoots and fava beans in his confit and loin of rabbit, or the hot radish that adds zip to a confit of salmon with orange and avocado.

Victoria Burghi, formerly of Tapika and Union Square Cafe, also takes the wine list seriously. Those wine ice creams (Sauternes, passito and muscat) catch the eye, as does the plum wine sorbet that accompanies her pistachio panna cotta. But like Mr. Haimowitz, she is not literal-minded about it. There is an extensive list of dessert wines, after all, which she has no intention of upstaging. The wineless desserts include a very sweet and highly ingenious honey semifreddo with blood orange sauce and a crunchy layer of sesame. It's a halvah bar achieved by devious means.

The payoff, for many diners, will be the list of wines by the glass, all 150 of them, administered in five-ounce pours that range in price from $6, for a La Gitana manzanilla, to more than $50 for a Bordeaux from Château Mouton-Rothschild. It's a list that allows diners to taste budget-busting wines at bargain prices.

Morrells, 900 Broadway, at 20th Street, Flatiron District, (212) 253-0900. Dinner entrees, $21 to $36.


William Grimes