Jean-Georges Vongerichten has made a career of taking tired old formulas (French cooking, Asian fusion, farm to table) and standing them artfully on their head, and at this impressive new destination restaurant down on Pier 17 at South Street Seaport he does the same thing for that most finicky and exacting of restaurant genres - seafood. But mostly go because this kind of painstakingly elegant establishment is vanishing from our dining world faster than the fish are disappearing from the sea, and when Maguy Le Coze and chef Ripert do finally decide to close their doors for good, we won’t see a restaurant like this in the city again. Go for the impeccable technique emanating from the kitchen in everything from the baking of bread to the work of the legions of sauciers to the legendary butcher Justo Thomas, who breaks down his fish in the basement for eight hours a day. Go, of course, for the rainbow of seafood textures and flavors, which, despite the challenges of maintaining variety, quality, and sustainability in the face of mounting odds, has retained its color and range for all these years. Go for the classic, old-world table service, which rivals any of the grand dowager restaurants in Paris. Go for the wine service, which is the finest in the city and possibly the entire USA. When Maguy Le Coze and her brother Gilbert opened for business in 1986 at the bottom of the Equitable Life Assurance building on West 51st Street, their restaurant instantly became the top seafood destination in the city, and until Mme Le Coze and her chef-partner Eric Ripert decide to retire from the city’s dining scene, that’s not going to change.
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