The name bit flipped all the cats and kitties and the squares and the cubes, but it ends up jive; don't jibe with the vibe. The man with the plan is a Jamme Chantler (not even Thelonious as a middle name), and the jammin' platters spun in my dinner era lacked a certain key pianist. The chef's not deaf, and Ginger XO (more name game, strains the brain, Jane) wants to make "jazz for the palate because we love to jam on Asian culinary themes."

There's no monkfish on the menu, and the "Mood Indigo Maki" ($10.95) doesn't even have a single indigo ingredient (or even bluefish) to it. Furthermore, the place isn't open "'Round Midnight" and there's no "Blue Monk," but, moving up a couple Miles, "So What?"

Thelonious Monkfish does have a sure-handed assortment of classic and modern sushi, and competent fusion food, with the all-important microbrews and sakes. The room looks Japanese, with a tatami platform for those young enough to ditch shoes and cross their legs. The menu is long and confusing. For example, "starters" and "zensai small plates" are a turned page apart.

Tiger's eye ($7) is a kind of sushi without rice, wrapped in calamari, and cooked. Here the filling is salmon, avocado, and seaweed, giving the tiger a pink-and-green eye, but the flavors blend well, and three bites are surprisingly substantial. Another three-bite winner is "hand-made steamed shu mai" ($5), lighter and fresher than the Chinatown standards, also larger with open tops on which a little mild shrimp paste provides an accent.

I AM CURIOUS (CHELOW) This type of saffron-flavored Persian rice is the perfect backdrop for Sabzi's sizzling kebabs.

From the point of view of fine dining, a key benefit of America's foreign interventions is the stream of incoming refugees and immigrants with slow-food-cooking skills. This column does not openly advocate military intervention in France and Italy — "food to die for" should remain a rhetorical phrase. But if there were to be, say, street riots in Singapore or Guangdong or Buenos Aires, I would be the first to point out the necessity of a strong stand for human rights and culinary opportunity.

Thus, our present standoff with Iran has to be evaluated both in terms of the price of gasoline at the pump and the availability of fesenjoon and kubideh kebab in the US. Sabzi Persian Chelow Kabab is an attempt to reproduce a Persian restaurant that does not often have fesenjoon (or any of the great Persian stews, or "koreshti") but specializes in kebabs on a particular version of a great Persian rice: chelow. It's served with pretty much everything here: a super-long-grain white with some basmati fragrance, traditionally enhanced by cooking a little bit with saffron and letting the aroma perfume the pot. This writer does not personally love saffron, but used as subtly as this, it makes for great rice.

First Printer is located on the site of the former home of Stephen Daye — reportedly the first printer in British North America — and commemorates the craft with a wall of old type cases and some framed historic newspapers. It is now a surprisingly capacious and comfortable gastropub, pitched to a younger audience with modest food prices and vast portions, financed by a mark-up on wines, draft and bottled beer, and cocktails. Indeed, with the lunch menu available all day, one could dine on single-digit dogs, burgers, and sandwiches, or spend up to $24 for rib-eye steak or seafood gumbo. The slant here is Southern comfort, with an accent on the Cajun, featuring such conversation starters as fried alligator, a buffalo burger, and wild-boar carbonara.

Although there was no vegetarian dinner entrée on the initial menu, the most voracious vegan would be satisfied with the black-bean hummus platter ($7; vegans can hold the cilantro-lime sour cream) served in a bread bowl, with grilled tofu, deep-fried flatbread "chips," and a few sticks of carrot and celery to dip into the spicy hummus. It would really be cool if black-bean hummus were jet black (as edamame hummus is green), but it comes out grayish brown.