If the Four Seasons is a bit like the finale of Proust's novel "Remembrance of Things Past," when the elderly hero, Marcel, walks into a soirée full of long-lost acquaintances just as creaky as he is, then the "freestyle" pan-Latin lounge-restaurant Macondo in Manhattan's East Village is like a magically real dream of the future out of Gabriel García Márquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude."

Macondo is, in fact, the made-up location on Colombia's Caribbean coast where the García Márquez novel takes place. The restaurant specializes in small-plate versions of street-food classics from all over Latin America and Spain. Colombia itself is represented by the carimañola, a cassava fritter. From Venezuela, comes that light and sweetish cornmeal bread-muffin, the arepa. From Puerto Rico, plantain-and-pork balls called mofongos. Macondo's kitchen turns out better versions of all these dishes than I have ever managed to find on their native ground.

The most expensive item on the menu costs $14. All dishes were painstakingly garnished and plated. The mixologist plays deep and original games with tropical fruit. No one but me in the crowded, lively place looked eligible for a senior discount on the subway.

We wish the Four Seasons another happy 50 years, but we think you don't need a weatherman to tell you the wind is blowing in Macondo's direction: affordable, small plates of attractive original food, in clublike settings with drinks from blenders, not from red Burgundies costing in the triple digits.

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