Aquavit

Spacesmith's redesign laid wide-planked Danish oak with butterfly joinery through all 12,000 square feet, wrapped the banquettes in a Scandinavian blue and let brass catch against the polished wood panels. Above the double-height bar, an undulating slatted ceiling twenty feet up survives from an earlier renovation, hung with pendants of blown glass. Tables run in twos and fours, set so the sightlines open onto a rotating art program.

The chef's tasting menu, $305 a head, opens on a langoustine tartlet, garlic confit and green tomatoes, and an elk tartare laid over pommes paillasson, before working through ossetra caviar with corn custard, Pemaquid mussels and puffed sorghum, to Elysian Fields lamb with pointed cabbage and chanterelles. Danish rye and lovage butter land midway, set down between the Hokkaido scallop and the halibut with salt-baked celeriac. Dessert is the Arctic Bird's Nest, a goat cheese parfait with blueberry sorbet and sea buckthorn curd.

The bar room runs its own card, sourdough waffles with an ounce of löjrom or ossetra, a smörgåsbord of two herrings, gravlax, shrimp skagen, cheese and potato, and meatballs with pommes purée, lingonberry and cucumber. House aquavit is infused four ways, anise with caraway and fennel, horseradish, lingonberry, and fig with cardamom. Bottlings from Iceland, Norway and Brooklyn share the list, which pours singly or three to a flight. Håkan Swahn named the place for that spirit in 1987.