Affecting the trappings of age can have a profound effect -- like the director who films in black-and-white to add authenticity, or the teenager who grows a mustache to sleep with your mom. For the restaurant version, try Tre, soft opening Thursday in the LES.

Decked out in speckled mirrors, exposed wood beams, and untreated metal designed to oxidize quickly, Tre takes on the role of trusted neighborhood joint by cultivating comfortable agedness (the same tactic Brian Dennehy used in Cocoon, making across-the-street Max Fish...Steve Gutenberg?). Appropriately, grub's Old World Italian (Cavatelli al Chipotle, Rigatoni Napoletani, etc), with the bar hosting a prosciutto stand and a glass display of cured lunch meats/veggies -- a wunderkammer of sandwich curiosities. For drinks there's Peroni, Euro wines, and cocktails made from champagne and prosecco -- so named because, not having been grown in America, they couldn't call it sparkling white wine.

Tre's opening with dinner service, and next week'll kick off a $17 unlimited-champagne brunch -- so after convincing the neighborhood of its trustworthiness, it'll leave you drunker than the furry-lipped teen buying your mom Jager Bombs at Max Fish.