Per Se, and the art of being flexible by a night

Per Se began with a line Thomas Keller kept repeating when people asked whether his New York restaurant would be another French Laundry. It was not going to be The French Laundry, he said, per se, and the phrase stuck as the name. It opened in February 2004 on the fourth floor of the Time Warner Center, now the Deutsche Bank Center, at Columbus Circle. Keller spent three and a half years on it with the designer Adam Tihany, and closed The French Laundry for five months so he could bring thirty of its staff east and teach the rest of the New York team how things are done in Yountville.

The reward was nearly immediate: the James Beard award for best new restaurant, four stars from The New York Times, and three Michelin stars, which it still holds. Then, in January 2016, Pete Wells took it down to two stars and called it among the worst food deals in the city, a review people in the business still quote. Per Se kept its Michelin stars. Ten years on, the story has settled into the house's character: a restaurant that knows exactly what it is and asks you to meet it there.

What it is, today, is a nine-course tasting menu that changes daily, with a nine-course vegetable menu beside it, classic French technique, and the views of Central Park that the room was built around. The constant is Oysters and Pearls, butter-poached oysters and tapioca in a warm sabayon under a heap of caviar. Even The Infatuation, otherwise unmoved, called it 'in fact, delicious' and likened it, kindly, to a very good mac and cheese. The salmon cornet still opens the meal.

The house cocktail is the Per Se Tonic and Gin.

The wine list runs to more than two thousand bottles, weighted toward older vintages and small producers who release very little. Because the menus change daily, the house says its sommeliers explore the whole list with you. The current list is deep in Champagne, Burgundy, Bordeaux, German Riesling and large formats, and by the glass you can find things a restaurant rarely pours that way: a 2015 Pol Roger Sir Winston Churchill, a 2010 Château d'Yquem, a Malvasia from 1907. The house cocktail is the Per Se Tonic and Gin.

If the Main Dining Room is full, there is the Salon, which serves a shorter menu that keeps the classics. One diner who could not get the dining room took the Salon instead and ended up at a window table over Columbus Circle with Oysters and Pearls in front of them. Parties of four to ten have the East Room, and the West Room seats sixty-six for something bigger.

Why it impresses: not because it is new, and not because everyone loves it. Because the calendar fills, because the cellar is the kind you cannot assemble quickly, and because a table here, on a weeknight, still reads as an occasion to the person across from you. The trick is flexibility. When we asked for a Tuesday in November, two seats were gone and the next open night was offered instead. Bring a second date, and you are usually in.

Text to ask.