A gourmet restaurant will take over the Hasty Pudding Club dining room by February, Michael Silver, part owner and chef of Michael's Restaurant, said recently.

The club is leasing its third-floor hall and kitchen to meet expenses. The Hasty Pudding's debts to Cambridge and local merchants are more than $150,000.

The restaurant completed the first legal step to operate in Cambridge at a public hearing Thursday, Alex Covell, the lawyer for the restaurant, said recently. The restaurant will lease the club's facilities for five years, according to a report in Sunday's Boston Globe.

Covell said "negotiations are moving right along," but he and Pudding officials declined to say when the contract would be finalized.

The restaurant, which will seat about 55, will serve "continental and American food with a strong Italian accent" at a cost of $18 to $25 per person, Silver, the restaurant's Italian-trained chef, said.

Silver, who is presently a chef at the Peasant Stock in Somerville, added that he will not change the dining room or kitchen, adding, "They are so beautiful, it would be stupid to touch them."

Members of the club said they would not miss the dining room. "We only used it occasionally anyway," Justin B. Hecht '83, treasurer of the Pudding, said recently.