Mosquitos were only part of the reason why our recent meal at Franchia goes down as the worst so far of 2008. We readily admit that the bizarrely out-of-season experience of being nibbled on indoors by bloodsuckers during one of the coldest days in March had us a little nonplussed, but, as you must know by now, we are willing to overlook a lot for the sake of good food. Really, we tried. Hard. But from the moment we were served one of Franchia’s soju cocktails, the green tea-based Awakening ($8.00), a watery, flavorless concoction with practically no alcohol, we started wondering if we shouldn’t start looking for a better place to eat. Our guest, MiniRabbi, tried hard to be positive about the meal, but even his enthusiasm flagged halfway through our greasy and flaccid, too-sweet appetizer of corn and cilantro pancakes ($8.95). And then I got bitten for the first time.

Moreover, I had plenty of time to figure out where the infestation problem was coming from, as we waited at least 30 minutes between starters and mains. During this time, one couple seated about ten feet away from us actually got up and left, telling the waiters on their way out the door that eating at their table was like “sitting inside a bug zapper.” So I shifted my chair as far away from the hot zone as I could, tried to pull my collar up around my neck and scanned the menu for OFF!. Not that I really expected it to be there; Franchia is, after all, a vegan restaurant, and in tune with its all-lives-are-equal ethos, those buzzing parasites had as much right to be there as we did. Of course, that didn’t stop me from murdering a few with the back of a menu when the waitstaff weren’t looking.

Yet despite all of this, we kept open minds and hoped for the best with our entrées. Franchia, while technically Korean, serves a selection of dishes that blend many Asian influences, so we opted to order dishes that reflected as many of the component cuisines as possible. HungryMan’s order of pumpkin noodles ($9.95) even came close to being good–the interplay of sweet pumpkin in the pasta and the savory soy glaze on this Korean-Chinese hybrid was wonderful–but the dish was undone by excessive oiliness and the ice-cold core at the center of the mound of noodles on the plate.

MiniRabbi’s pad thai (pictured on Flickr, $9.95) also arrived a little tepid and generally free of any kind of flavor whatsoever. Even if we chalk the failure of this dish up to the absence of non-vegan ingredients like fish sauce, there is still plenty that can be done with tamarind purée, galangal, kaffir lime leaves and chili. Yet at Franchia, the spiciest ingredient in the kitchen seems to be the carrot.

The same unyielding blandness came through in my own main, the curry soy ‘chicken’ rice bowl ($12.95), a bibimbop-style dish served in a dolsot, a traditional Korean stone bowl that was, by a few hundred degrees, the hottest thing on the table. Unfortunately, there was not much curry flavor in either the potato, soy meat and carrot stew, nor in the rice underneath. Even the crusty rice lining the dolsot was a disappointment without more intense flavors–well, any flavors–seeping down from the toppings. All I got was crunch and wound up leaving most of it behind. The sight of all of that crisp, golden rice at the bottom of my stone bowl was more of an indictment than my bug-bitten arms, neck and even earlobe were, because it is easy enough to turn a blind vegan eye when the exterminator comes in to clear out the bugs, but it is far, far more difficult to perform the kind of gut rehab that Franchia’s menu desperately needs.

Franchia, 12 Park Avenue (between 34th and 35th Streets), 212-213-1001.