Gabriel Kreuther

The restaurant takes two floors of the Grace Building, with Bryant Park directly across 42nd Street, and Glen Coben's firm laid them out as a version of an Alsatian town square, a street of sorts running from the lounge through to the dining room. Reclaimed timbers from an 1880s Vermont barn stand upright along one edge of it, fourteen inches apart in a long curve, and glass globe lights hang over the banquettes opposite in place of village street lamps. Forty-two crystal storks hang from the curved platinum ceiling, flying east toward Strasbourg, the city Kreuther is from. The bar stools are a heart, the Alsatian sign of hospitality.

Kreuther ran the kitchen at The Modern for close to a decade before opening here in June 2015. The cooking is French technique on Alsatian material: tartes flambées of applewood smoked bacon or hen of the woods, a comté crust over poached halibut, skate cheeks in sauce grenobloise. Dinner runs three courses at 200 dollars or four at 235, and the 325 dollar tasting collects what has lasted. Kreuther built the sturgeon tart after a guest dared him to put sauerkraut on a fine dining menu. A savory kougelhopf arrives before any of it.

Across that square the lounge takes reservations and serves the full run of menus, while the bar works à la carte and holds its seats for whoever walks in. A separate table seats up to ten for the Alsatian tasting menu. That one is inside the kitchen.