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JULIA TIERNAN/YH Is there anything more you could ask for on Valentine's Day than renovated XandO?

As schizoid as its half-moon, half-sun logo, the new XandO seeks to be even more all-purpose than it was before it closed months ago for renovations. No longer content to be a simple hybrid bar/coffeehouse, XandO has spent the past few months mutating into an altogether new species of restaurant: the bar/coffee/pizza/lunch joint.

The décor of the restaurant has changed somewhat, but the basic concept remains the same. The new windows on the second floor are a very nice touch, and the velvet curtains that separate the happy diners from the really happy drinkers are downright fabulous.

The color scheme is still very much about deep primary colors, and the lighting scheme is still heavily reliant on strangely-shaped translucent things hanging from the ceiling. Little has changed as far as the sound system goes; they were having an '80s revival when the place closed for renovations in November and, three months later, Cutting Crew is still on the cutting edge.

The pizza, made by a crew of goat-eed men in black berets and turtlenecks on the first floor, is pleasant and fairly cheap. The ingredients are all fresh and prepared well, and the pizza is considerably lighter-tasting than anything else in the Broadway area. As we all know far too well, the mark of an extraordinary dining establishment in New Haven is that you don't feel as though you need to lie down after eating the food. In that respect, XandO is a fine little restaurant.

So, the pizza's pretty good and all, but really now, why can't we just have a nice, simple, normal coffee shop to hang around in? The way the restaurant stands now, the clock strikes eight o'clock, and then all of sudden there's nowhere to go if you just want to kick it and procrastinate. I guess you could go to Koffee?, but they've gotten into the unfortunate habit of hiring weird, poetic, vaguely crusty folk musicians who enjoy playing the tambourine and singing about all the wonderful girls they dated in high school.

You could venture to Naples, but then you'd have to deal with the jukebox that, if left unattended, switches on to autopilot and alternates between "No Woman No Cry" and "Break on Through" for pretty much the entire night. Or you could go to Au Bon Pain, but if you spend more than half an hour under the fluorescent lighting, it's a well-known fact that you might, as a result, go totally blind in the process. Finally, there are all of the other prototypical pizzerias that parade as diners on Broadway, but they get just plain bitchy if you order a 90-cent cup of coffee and nothing else.

Simply put, it is our God-given right as overeducated, liberal arts brats to have unlimited access to dimly lit, smoky hangouts at every hour of every night. Unfortunately, the Administration's Broadway development committee doesn't quite seem to hold the same opinion.

And so what we have is XandO, an establishment that aims to encompass the whole of the Yale College experience in one mere corner storefront. As you eat your pizza, sip your coffee, drink your beer, and listen to a recording of what is essentially the soundtrack of the Safety Dance, you sort of have to wonder about the validity of your existence as a Yale undergraduate. If they can stuff all of the essential components of your attempt at a social life into one relatively small building, can you really be living life to the ab-solute fullest?

All that's left to do is put a keg in the bathroom--then they'll be able to replace the hostess with a carnival caller and charge admission to what will by that time have become a life-size diorama of college life. Compared to the combination of pizza, hard liquor, and s'mores, it seems like a fairly logical marketing strategy to me.

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