Introduction: As master of cheese and much more at New York’s Gramercy Tavern, you’d be forgiven for not knowing that executive sous chef Chris Bradley also has a way with words. In an ongoing series of New York restaurant reviews, Bradley sacrifices himself to raw langoustine tail, barbecued eel, and ostrich egg to give us a taste of New York.

L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon

I wish I was better versed in the specifics of interior design so that I could better describe the peculiar lighting effect that caused me to feel, upon stepping into this restaurant, that I had been transported into a Wong Kar-Wai movie set in some future Asian territory where French was the preferred mode of communication and cuisine the intermediary bridge between word and deed. Perhaps it was aided by the long trek through multiple lobbies in the Four Seasons Hotel that left me unsure of what street in which city I had just departed, but the foot level luminescence aimed skyward set the room aglow like a jewel adorned solarium.

The restaurant consists of little more than two curving banquettes and a kitchen framed by bar seats, the sum set just off to the side of the hotel’s pre-existing bar and lounge. I could easily imagine this backroom as an empty wing of that bar in a prior life, too far of a trek from table to counter for one of the guests to justify even leaving the comforts of their room upstairs. But with M. Robuchon now entrenched in the void, the workshop takes center stage in the world of haute cuisine.

The food is unmistakably the product of M. Robuchon’s evolution since leaving behind his formal ways and adapting the Japanese omakase to the French palate. There is still a degustation menu as well as the traditional “les entrees froides et chaudes” and “les poissons et les viandes”; but a thorough scan of the left hand side of the menu reveals that everything makes a less expensive appearance in a small portion role. A raw langoustine tail is turned into a mosaic of translucent circles dressed simply in lemon and olive oil, then dotted here and there by tweezered hands with caviar and micro herbs. The sushi cliche, barbecued eel, is revived once its sweet glaze is sandwiched around cubes of smoked foie gras terrine. Frog legs, stripped of every bone except what’s necessary to lift it from the pools of garlic and parsley purees, are perfectly coated in delicate bread crumbs devoid of any greasy residue. An ostrich egg shaped bowl arrives and the top is removed to reveal nimbus clouds of anise and briny sea urchin roe.

Joel, as I began to refer to the man across the Atlantic who visits this restaurant less frequently than most of us visit the dentist, has always been a fan of cooking “a la plancha” and here it is employed to roast a moist turbot, the filets bathed in artichokes barigoule enriched with deeply smoked ham. J-bones, as I began to call this man as the third glass of Burgundy began to invade my senses, rose to culinary fame with his treatment of puree de pomme de terre, the transubstantiation of potatoes into a butter enriched potato pudding. The lesson of tradition and decadence continued as these potatoes made their appearance in the signature “la caille au foie gras caraelisee et sa pomme puree a la truffe noire”, a quail stuffed with foie gras and garnished simple with a side of the famous potatoes smothered in black winter truffles.

I wish I could continue to wax so rhapsodically about the desserts but by this time more food was simply adding insult to injury I had done my waistline and arteries. A baba as light as air floated over thyme scented pineapple and Okinawa black sugar ice cream. My savior proved to be the delicious lemongrass nage with diced fruit and basil-lime sorbet. The magic of the moment all came crashing down as I realized that transformative journey to another world would now have to be done in reverse with the extra baggage I’d just consumed. I’d somehow become M. Robuchon culinary Sherpa, only he’d carried me up to the top of Everest and I only had to lug the burden home and to work the next morning.