Bouley's Brushstroke

David Bouley's Japanese-inspired Brushstroke has been seven years in the making and is still not finished—though it is open for dinner. He and his Japanese chefs, Isao Yamada and Hiroki Murashima, collaborated on developing recipes in Bouley's nearby test kitchen and are continuing to exhaustively explore seafood options and source or grow the most exquisite produce. To experience their Kyoto-style tasting menus, it's $85 for eight courses and $135 for 10. À la carte menu is available in the bar and lounge, where a wall is built of 20,000 used books, their pages exposed rather than their spines. The dining room has a modern aesthetic, utterly transformed from its days as the baroque Danube. There is sushi, but it's not the point. Carefully composed dishes run more along the lines of duck smoked with sencha leaves accompanied by softened agebitashi eggplant, buckwheat okayu and sencha tea sauce.