Taste by Niche seats about 18 people, but it seems much smaller than that.

The annex to the wildly acclaimed Niche restaurant in Benton Park has eight chairs at a refectory table in the front window, which holds a full party of eight if you happen to walk in that way but mingles your twosome with three others if that's the way the table fills up. Three more diners can be squashed against a wall, where a narrow shelf holds your food and drink and the only view of the action is via a mirror unless your neck can do a Linda Blair swivel.

A final lucky seven get to sit at the bar, where master bartender Ted Kilgore combines liquors, fruits, vegetables and an apothecary of tinctures of flavor into a selection of cocktails that conjures images of women in evening gowns and men in white ties and tails.

Of course, in this day and age, your distressed jeans are more than adequate.

A single server circulates for food orders and drink orders, while Nick Blue works in the New York apartment-size kitchen behind the counter, plating about a dozen deceptively well thought out small plates ($8) that not surprisingly, given the annex's recurring graphic motif of the edible sections of a pig, lean heavily on pork.

Cooking appliances are at a minimum: Two Mr. Induction heating elements, a warm-water-based heater that looks like it came out of a chem lab and a spinning-blade meat slicer to get the charcuterie within razor-thin tolerances.

An appetite for the rustic fare of the French or Italian countryside is pretty much a requirement. Several of the dishes, such as pork rillettes, foie gras mousse or a pork and foie combination, are served in ramekins with various toasts on the side.

Almost everything, however, has some sort of memorable complement — a pear and orange compote, for example, with the mousse, or the bright greens and reds of a radish and parsley salad atop three spicy pork meatballs served in a partitioned cast-iron tray.

Carne cruda is the Italian analog for steak tartare, raw beef that's in this case minced rather than ground, served with baby greens and shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano. Tiny pickled beets of blood red and pink hues are mixed with ricotta, and radishes take on a new personality when roasted and served on bruschetta.

The charcuterie is house-made and rotates; one evening's plate had two salamis, a saucisson sec (dry sausage of pork with minimal added flavoring) and a coppa of a much smaller diameter than the stuff were used to seeing on the Hill. It came on a serving board with house-made, subtly sweet pickles and coarse mustard.

The charcuterie selections of the day are listed along with soup, dessert and nightly specials on a chalkboard that takes up most of a wall, as well as the available cheeses, three of which make up a serving. The choices on our two visits illustrated a sufficient depth, including fromage de meaux, talleggio, bleu d'Auvergne and Old Chatham Ewe's Blue.

Only a plate of small octopus with potatoes felt out of place; aside from olives, it was the one thing on the menu that clearly originated from an out-of-area supplier.

If you're not a cocktail drinker, become one for at least the evening when you visit Taste. The combinations may seem unlikely — for example, dry vermouth, Benedictine and absinthe in a concoction called a Chrysanthemum — but the final products are remarkable, and Kilgore's virtuosity on the shaker is almost a floor show of its own.

No reservations are accepted, although they'll write your name on a chalkboard if no seats are available and call your cell phone when something opens up. Thus admission can be something of a crap shoot: After killing 45 minutes despite being at the top of the list one night, a half-hour after we got there, another party of two would have had their immediate choice of three places to sit.

The overall experience at Taste can straddle a fine line between claustrophobia and intimacy. In the end, however, you're almost forced to feel like you've been admitted to a highly exclusive club.