Aska

Fredrik Berselius left Stockholm for New York kitchens, Aquavit and Per Se among them, and opened the first version of this restaurant in 2012 before moving it in the summer of 2016 into a restored 1860s warehouse under the Williamsburg Bridge, a rebuild he knows down to the screws. Byblack drew the interior around the open kitchen, in exposed brick, wood floors and black cloth, and set ten tables in front of it. The black runs to the servers and the leather menus. Aska is Swedish for ashes.

The chefs carry the courses out themselves, twelve to fourteen of them at 375 dollars, wine from 250. Much of what they carry is foraged or put up on the kitchen's own field trips, the lichen out of Harriman State Park, the birch and reindeer moss and white currants out of a Catskills creek bed three hours north that conjures his grandfather's summer house, with scallops off Cape Cod and hake from Massachusetts. Dried bladderwrack opens the meal under a blue mussel emulsion, the langoustine comes sauced with its own caramelized shell against red gooseberry, and the kohlrabi arrives dressed in linden leaf oil and linden flower vinegar. What cannot be got fresh in February was preserved in August.

The two-starred dining room takes reservations and serves the tasting menu only. Downstairs in the cellar bar, and out in the garden in the warm months, the list runs to wine, beer, cocktails and a few shareable plates with caviar instead. Neither takes a booking.