For Spankers and Spankees Alike, Slappy Hour’s a Hit at S&M; Restaurant

Will that be spanking or non-spanking, sir?

A new little French restaurant in town is serving up mild sadomasochism with the food, offering such fare as a birthday paddling, boot cleaning or the chance to eat from a dog bowl at the feet of a whip-wielding mistress.

“It’s like Disney meets S&M;,” said comedian Joan Rivers, who loves the place, La Nouvelle Justine, in the city’s Chelsea neighborhood. “Our busboy didn’t bring the bread fast enough, so the maitre d’ spanked him.”

“The only thing that worries me,” said Rivers, “is that some of my friends really got into it.”

On weekends, La Nouvelle Justine, named for a Marquis de Sade novel, draws more giggling voyeurs than hard-core aficionados of the master. One Friday night, diners at New York’s only S&M; restaurant included traveling businessmen and two Wall Street bachelorette parties, as well as the staff of Mistress Mine, a magazine for dominatrixes and the men who worship them.

Between courses, a 30-year-old secretary ordered spankings from the $20 “Special Fare” menu for both her brother and her boyfriend.

“It was totally worthwhile--there’s nothing like seeing your loved ones get put in their proper place,” Tina Block said. “I’d also like to get one for my mother, but I don’t think she’d be into it. Then again, she did it to me.”

The restaurant, which opened three months ago, is so crowded that dinner is by reservation only. Dinner and wine run about $50 per person, no beatings included.

Before ordering black linguine, canard confit Juliette or other French specialties, patrons can loosen up with “Masochist” and “Necrophiliac” martinis, or contemplate medieval fetish scenes etched on the walls.

Dim lighting obscures the devices the staff and patrons use to exchange mild abuse: a prison cell, an oversize high chair, a pair of leather wrist cuffs hanging from the ceiling.

The busboys double as “slaves.” They move along quietly in vinyl shorts and dog collars until commanded to shine a patron’s boots or deliver the check between their teeth. The waiters and waitresses are called “dominants”--as in: “Ask your dominant for tonight’s specials.”

“A restaurant is all about service anyhow,” said Robert Jason, 29, who owns the restaurant with his wife, Hayne, 41. “We’ve just taken the servant and master theme and exploded it.”

Curtis Alva, a lawyer who was emboldened after a salmon tartare appetizer and foot massage, made the mistake of spanking a passing waitress.

“Do I look like a submissive?” asked willowy Bianca, who is actually a transvestite. Bianca swiftly removed Alva’s gold-rimmed glasses and smacked him across the face, three times, hard.

“I feel something, but I’m not sure it’s my endorphins,” said Alva, who was in town from Wilmington, Del., to clinch a merger.

The Jasons--he’s a commercial and video producer, she’s a former lawyer--also own three Lucky Cheng’s restaurants in New York, Miami and New Orleans, where transvestites serve up pan-Asian fare with sass.

“The appeal of hokey, light sex might translate outside of New York if it doesn’t get too hard-edged,” said Tim Zagat, publisher of the respected Zagat guides to restaurants and hotels. “But I wonder if people will go again and again to a thing that is for most people a turn-off.”

Actually, the real S&M; and fetish enthusiasts of Chelsea find the weekend scene at La Nouvelle Justine a bit too tame.

“I expected more gay people and more leather,” said a 49-year-old government official who called himself Slave. “This could be a spot for bus tourists.”