Bubbly Bar's food is sparkling

Aujourd'hui has a little bit of a split identity , at least on Friday nights. That's when the Four Seasons restaurant's Bubbly Bar attracts a well-heeled crowd that fills out the lounge area for fizzy flights of fancy. Their fur coats have been safely stored in a nearby closet.

For years, a misconception has held that Aujourd'hui is where you go to be seen; you don't go there necessarily for the scene. You literally graduate to Aujourd'hui -- up a flight of stairs from the uber-busy and more casual Bristol Lounge directly below it.

It's the decor that gives Aujourd'hui a bad name. You look up to see huge paintings of stiff Victorian matrons with stiffer hair and children dressed in creepy clown attire. The looming paintings surround you, and yet no one seems to know much about them, including Regan Dillon , publicist for the Four Seasons. Dillon says she's not sure who painted them or when they're from, but she wanted to run a contest for folks to figure out the artist (good idea).

The Bubbly Bar disputes all this. Yes, the dining room, a sea of plush carpeting and perfectly set tables, looks ready to host the Queen Mum, but the lounge area is buzzing with after-work chatter from patrons pawing at bowls of peanuts and ready to forget their work week.

So here we are, just two days before we'll be getting our champagne fix on New Year's Eve, sinking into soft couches as trays of complimentary "nibbles" (their word, not mine) appear every 10 minutes or so.

The menu changes weekly, but tonight we're noshing on gougeres , truffled popcorn, lobster salad on wonton crisps, daikon radish cannelloni with mascarpone and chestnut honey, and spana kopita. The popcorn is addictive, and the gougeres, golden-brown pastry puffs filled with Gruyere, are the real highlight. (On a second passing, a different waiter calls them "cheese balls." We liked them more when they were gougeres.)

The evening's sparkling wines traverse the globe, from South Africa and Italy to France and Spain, with brut, cava, prosecco, and rosé offerings. The prosecco, with a hint of sweetness, is a particular favorite.

All of this is fine and tasty, but we're hungry. Within minutes, we're ordering from menus from Bristol Lounge and Aujourd'hui. Curiously, the service, which was great in the beginning, gets more lax the less crowded it becomes. And the food, too, arrives at an excruciating pace, at least 45 minutes after we ordered it.

But we can't deny that it's really good food. The cheese plate is so beloved, it rarely leaves its station at the end of the table. It would be nice to know what cheeses we're sampling, but that doesn't stop us from devouring the dish down to the last little grape.

Meanwhile, the fried calamari is among the best we've ever had, beautifully flash-fried and perfect with a spray of lemon juice and rings of jalapeño peppers. It's so good on its own that the accompanying pesto aioli sits untouched. The beef carpaccio is strips of thinly shaved meat buried under even more delicate ribbons of cheese. The turkey club is your classic rendition and big enough to share.

Looking around, one of us is convinced every woman here is cut from the Blythe Danner mold. You know the kind -- regal, middle-aged woman with dishwater hair, clad in a black leather jacket and a Chanel bag tossed over her shoulder. We spot at least three such characters mingling at the bar, and then a family of four walks by, giving us our first glimpse of a teenage young man in a suit and tie and a mouth full of braces. They're on their way to the dining room, of course. The Bubbly Bar is much too casual for Dockers.

Aujourd'hui (in the Four Seasons Hotel), 200 Boylston St., 617-351-2037 . The Bubbly Bar, which runs Fridays from 5:30 to 7 p.m., is closed tonight and resumes Jan. 19. Sparkling wines are $10 a pop, with complimentary hors d'oeuvres.

James Reed can be reached at jreed@globe.com.