Formerly: Ah, Park Avenue! The tree-lined medians tinkered with Christmas lights during winter, the pricey real estate ... the designer hamburgers. You'll find the latter, at least, in the Lakeview version. Park Ave. takes the place of Purgatory Pizza with oddly nothing suggestive of the famous Manhattan boulevard, instead serving upmarket patties named after well-known Chicago parks.

A set of chandeliers and the two mirrors you donated to the Brown Elephant last year propped against plum walls lack the brawny shoulders of a hamburger hut the restaurant hopes portraying. Baseball on a collection of flat screens recaptures the machismo diluted with the design.

One slow Tuesday evening, three couples huddled before the bar, occasionally encouraging their team between licking the ketchup from the hinges of their lips. Busier nights see friends gabbing on sofa chairs plotted beside a garage door open for public view. Lunch crowds gobble up main-floor seating encompassing thick wooden tables and gargantuan matching chairs.

While Park Ave. boasts some of the city's best burgers, we're not sure the claim, nor the track lights and exposed ventilation, give the restaurant enough survival tools for an area where businesses come and cede more often than Madonna reinvents herself.

Park Ave. needs a little bit of oomph. Otherwise, the novel burger menu which includes the Humboldt Park (eight-ounce char broiled ground steak, pulled pork and barbecue sauce) and the Lincoln Park dripped with foie gras butter, may never get that well-deserved shine that burgers, like Rockit Bar & Grill's, cast.

Average cost: $10-$20

Centerstage Reviewer: David-Anthony Gonzalez