Chinese puzzle on the East Side

Steve Cuozzo

FREE RANGE

East 53rd Street between Second and Third avenues laughs at Manhattan’s other “restaurant rows.” The block’s home to a mind-boggling 24 eateries offering Italian, Chinese, Mexican, Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Hawaiian, Korean, Spanish, Irish, Japanese, Middle Eastern and perhaps Martian menus.

Let’s hope that number does not shrink to a mere 23. “Modern-Chinese” Walle has been less than bustling since it opened six weeks ago. This is regrettable because it has some marvelous dishes. But a place where red wine arrived hotter than fried oysters is not playing with a full set of fortune cookies.

Zandy Mangold

Walle offers some superb dishes, but still needs to settle on a cohesive culinary style.

Zandy Mangold

Trio of Angus beef cuts.

Zandy Mangold

Bacon-crusted black cod.

In fact, there are no fortune cookies. Walle shuns stereotypes for a thoroughly unfocused culinary blur. A manager called it “Chinese with an American spin;” the menu references “real home Shanghai cooking” learned by chef/partner Chris Cheung on an island off Shenjiamen, and “artisanal”-sourced meat and greenmarket produce suggest a hip American bistro.

Walle is the brainchild of owner Wally Chin, who’s also an owner of popular Chin Chin a few blocks south, and well-traveled Cheung, who’s Brooklyn-born, Chinatown-raised, and was schooled at numerous French and Asian restaurants, including Nobu and Jean Georges.

Two main rooms are splashed in gold, red and black tile and softened with white tablecloths and red banquettes; the loungy front room features a bar backed by enormous, back-lit W’s in blue. The look is more generic than Asian, appropriate to the fuzzily defined theme.

Not to quibble: The uptown Chinese scene is generally so dismal, we’ll take any permutation as long as it tastes good. Cheung’s kitchen turned out a stirring Creekstone Farms trio of Angus beef cuts ($29) — grilled filet, slow-roasted short rib and roasted bone marrow — their flavors deepened by carrot puree and arrestingly differentiated by oyster, hawksaan and X/O sauces.

I don’t know whether Cheung was really once “in charge of” Nobu’s famous black cod, as his publicity material states, but I’ll spot him points for his applewood-smoked bacon version ($23) at Walle. Fleshy, pan-seared fluke with pork chili-crusted king crab ($26) was a loving homage to a favorite of the chef at Hop Kee on Mott Street.

“Market seafood” ($23) — generous littleneck clams, monkfish, rock shrimp and lobster — came in spicy, garlicky broth with a layer of tongue-tingling noodles at the bottom. We twice enjoyed greaseless barbecue rice dishes, including “treasures” with roast duck and pork, Chinese sausage and a poached farmer’s egg ($19).

But we drew the line at items that might have come from the sports bar on the corner, such as panko-battered cod with mushy Yukon gold potatoes standing in for chips ($18); salt-and-pepper rock shrimp ($10) served near-cold; and lobster dumplings ($12) with scallops that managed to be both cold and burnt.

The appetizers have improved since the miserable ones we had a month ago. Even so, Walle has an unmanaged feel, despite a floor full of managers and waitstaff who often don’t have enough to do.

Red wine was warm enough for a foot bath. Waits between courses ran to a half-hour. A supervisor shouted at waiters. Busboys persistently tried to pour tap water into glasses of $8 sparkling.

The waitress explained that a house-pride drink, the oystertini, is a vodka martini with an oyster on the side, “but which you can have in the drink,” an option we declined. Yet the bar couldn’t make a proper bourbon sour by any definition.

Last week, the lights suddenly brightened and dimmed by turns for no apparent reason, except perhaps as a hint to finish our meal and leave — a sense in no way lessened by staffers impatiently hovering.

Our checkout time was 10:24 p.m. — early even for Midtown. I hope it’s not a harbinger of Walle’s long-term prospects, because its best dishes deserve a long run.

scuozzo@nypost.com