Nearly 100 years after Selfridges & Co., the UK department store chain, first popularized the concept of a restaurant within a shopping outlet, co-locating dining and retail opportunities has become common practice. Today, you can grab a bite to eat inside a book shop, a furniture store, and even in a haute couture showroom. HungryMan and I affectionately call these symbiotic eateries ‘nested restaurants’ and sometimes discuss how hard it is for them to break out of mediocrity, tainted as they are by the stigma of the suburban mall food court. But clearly, some have done exactly this. Bergdorf Goodman, for example, has built a reputation for posh excellence that has transferred well to all of its restaurants–most recently BG, on the store’s seventh floor. Nicole Farhi also has done well with her Chelsea Market bistro-cum-boutique, 202. What both of these restaurants have in common is that they exist as dining destinations on their own, independent of their conjoined retail twin.

When David Burke at Bloomingdale’s and Burke in the Box opened a little over 18 months ago, we made a conscious decision to hold off writing about them for at least a year, figuring that the restaurants needed time to develop their own style, fully independent of the flagship Bloomingdale’s that plays host to the split-space dining rooms. It would, we suspected, take at least 12 months for any kind of café to emerge from the hulking shadow of Bloomingdale’s. So we waited, sampling dishes here and there, but always with the intention of revisiting a more mature version of the bistro sometime in 2007. And this week, when the weather started turning from sweltering to nippy, I met our friend Salli Vates for lunch.

Things started out awkwardly when neither we, nor the waitstaff, could determine exactly which restaurant we were in–Burke in the Box and David Burke at Bloomingdale’s are separated by Bloomingdale’s 59th Street entrance vestibule. Simple enough. Except that, in addition to a long street-facing bar for carry-out customers inside Burke in a Box, there are several reserved tables in the same space that are meant to be occupied only by diners who cannot be seated in the other room. Burke in the box in a box, as it were.

In the end, we opted for a two-top in the main David Burke at Bloomingdale’s room and quickly placed our orders from the short, well-edited list of hot and cold sandwiches, pizzas, soups, salads and appetizers. We shared an order of the truffle and asiago french fries (pictured top,$4.50) and were delighted to find them steaming hot, crispy, and flavored with plenty of truffle oil–enough to permeate even the crunchiest bits at the bottom of the toque-shaped container in which they were served. Now, I am not someone who believes in the unerring power of the truffle to improve any dish–I think truffles are generally overrated and underscrutinized, especially when they are shaved carelessly over food and used to mask inferior ingredients and preparations, as happens all too often. That said, these fries were splendid, and they were to be my favorite part of the meal.

Salli’s Maryland Crab Cake Panini (pictured above, $15.95) was also commendable, resembling a cross between a crab salad and a grilled cheese sandwich. We both thought the Old Bay french fries were an excellent complement to the panini, and while they were not quite as exceptional as the truffle and asiago fries, they were light, hot, and well-salted. On the other hand, my grilled vegetable and fresh mozzarella salad (also pictured above, $15.95) was pure disappointment, thanks to the palate-scorching quantity of balsamic vinegar used to coat the vegetables before (and possibly after) grilling. The vegetables were cooked through nicely, with a bit of crunchy texture, but the entire plate had just one flavor: the sweet-and-sour punch of balsamic. Two full glasses of iced tea later, I was able to recover enough of my sense of taste to attempt dessert.

For this, Salli and I crossed back over into Burke in the Box, where we ordered a miniature red velvet cupcake ($1.25) and a chocolate creme brulee ($4.95). The cupcake was dense and barely pink inside, with a fatty and bland frosting that added nothing to the cake. Life is too short to waste on lackluster cupcakes. Fortunately, the chocolate creme brulee was gratifyingly creamy, with plenty of intense cocoa flavor. Its one big fault was that its crunchy caramelized sugar top lost all texture after refrigeration, so that by the time we took a bite, the crust was little more than a sweet, scabrous skin. And as Salli and I parted ways, I couldn’t help but think that the $27 I had spent on lunch could have been put to much better use. Had we taken our meals to-go in stylish pinstriped Burke in the Box packaging, we would have spent about 33% less, and perhaps at that price we might have felt more satisfied. None of this is to say that I will not be back to this particular nested restaurant–but next time, I will go with a plan to guard against disappontment: order only a glass of wine and the truffle asiago french fries. Not the healthiest lunch, but one that holds the promise of a menu that makes battling past little old ladies clutching Big Brown Bags all worthwhile.

David Burke at Bloomingdale’s/Burke in the Box, 150 East 59th Street (between Lexington and Third Avenues), 212-705-3800.