Lawyers, prepare your briefs.

And put on clean ones.

The New York Post reports on Gotham’s burgeoning food porn trend to consume meat raw, and lining up for the privilege.

Takashi is one of a small but growing number of restaurants around the city catering to those who are rah-rah about consuming their animal flesh raw-raw.

The first dish to come out is the yooke, ground chuck prepared like a Japanese version of steak tartare. Topped with a raw quail egg, it’s adorned with Japanese seaweed and an enormous shiso leaf.

It’s also by far the tamest uncooked dish at Takashi, which gets its meat from some of the better purveyors around, such as Dickson’s Farmstand and Pat LaFrieda.

Maybe they have those CSI UV goggles that make dangerous bacteria visible. Otherwise, it’s hucksterism to charge a premium.

“Raw meats or undercooked foods leave you at risk of infection [of parasites or a slew of other illnesses],” says Dr. Michael Mansour of the division of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital.

According to NYC’s Department of Health, restaurants must notify diners when food isn’t cooked to required temperatures — either verbally or by printing this on the menu. A diner may also request such a dish. Basically, it’s buyer beware — though the DOH says it will investigate complaints of people getting sick from eating raw food. But with so many New Yorkers obsessed with high-quality ingredients, meat so fresh it can be served raw is seen as a benchmark — not a danger.

Food porn trumps.

At downtown’s Acme, you’ll find endive leaves stuffed with a mix of raw bison and sweet shrimp. At Manzo in Eataly, Piedmontese beef is hand-cut and ground to order. Hakata Tonton, just a couple of blocks from Takashi, offers veal liver sashimi on its menu, as does EN Japanese Brasserie on Hudson Street. Last fall, Hecho en Dumbo in the East Village offered venison tartare on the chef’s menu. (It plans to bring it back next fall, too.)

And then there’s raw chicken, a dish not for the squeamish. “There are a lot of places in the city that serve raw chicken,” says Dave Pasternack, chef-owner of Esca in Hell’s Kitchen. But you might have to ask, with a nudge and a wink, to go off the menu.

For some, raw meat is uncontroversial. “It’s my soul food,” says Takashi’s Inoue, who grew up in Osaka. “That’s how we eat in my home in Japan. The meat is very, very fresh.”

Very fresh, except when it sickens and kills, like it did in Japan last year, leaving four dead and at least 70 sickened with E. coli O111 from raw beef.

Pick your poison.

Julie Powell, who wrote that Julie and Julia book that became the movie with Meryl Streep impersonating Dan Aykroyd impersonating Julia Child, writes in the New York Times today that when the city’s restaurant inspection disclosure program started 19 months ago, she was going to eat at restaurants with a “C.”

“I had some romantic notions that the best, most authentic food could emerge only from kitchens not polished to an antiseptic shine — and that armed with my iron stomach and enlightened mind, I would march into divey joints in the far-flung corners of the five boroughs and experience exotic flavors and spiritual sustenance my more fastidious dining counterparts would forever miss out on.

“It didn’t happen like that. Those glorious hole-in-the-wall places so beloved to us food types are doing just fine. A spin around the restaurant inspection site confirms that your favorite lousy Chinese joint or Uzbek cafe is scoring just as well as the critics’ darlings. In fact, about 72 percent of the city’s restaurants are posting “A” grades; of those, more than 60 percent earned “A’s” on the first inspection. It turns out it’s actually a challenge to find a “C” restaurant at which to tempt fate."

Powell (no relation) asks, “Why mark a restaurant with a “B,” or, God forbid, the dreaded “C”? Isn’t that like placing a scarlet letter on the place?

Exactly. “Do I expect people to see a mediocre grade and decide, ‘Hmm, I’m going to think twice about this’? Yes!” says Daniel Kass, a deputy health commissioner for environmental health. “Only incredible inattentiveness results in a C grade.”

Starting July 1, restaurants in Albany County, New York, will be required to post a prominent sign (right) near the front entrance to announce a simple, clear verdict of county health inspections: excellent, good, fair or unsatisfactory.

Only the first three will remain on display; restaurants that receive an “unsatisfactory” rating will be required to close immediately to remedy health violations and will be reinspected within days.

Although inspection criteria, guided by state law, will not change, Albany County Department of Health restaurant inspectors will use a new rating matrix to decide which rating to award. The matrix takes into account the number of “blue” (minor) and “red” (serious) violations a restaurant receives.

According to the language of the final resolution, adopted by the county board of health last month, restaurants receiving a “fair” rating will be reinspected within two to three weeks, while those that receive a “good” may request a reinspection, to be carried out “as staffing and resources permit.” Inspections are done at county expense, and there is no provision in the new law for restaurants to be able to pay for a reinspection to be done more quickly.

Scores of city restaurants with expansive menus and sit-down service are, according to New York Daily News, escaping scrutiny by registering with the state as supermarkets or wholesalers.

The list of full-blown eateries too cool for school includes popular pizzerias in Brooklyn, a bagel store in Manhattan and a Dunkin’ Donuts in Queens.

Officially, the city Health Department is responsible for local restaurants, cafes and delis. The state Department of Agriculture and Markets oversees establishments that operate supermarkets, bodegas or wholesale markets as 50% or more of their business.

The line has blurred since the city changed its inspection system in July 2010.

Many restaurants that sell a few products to local groceries, or are attached to big supermarkets, often use this as a way to be placed under state control, records show. That has enabled them to avoid tough city reviews that could lead to a dreaded C grade — even though many operate full-scale restaurants.