The tower at 70 Pine Street is one of Lower Manhattan's most striking Art Deco landmarks — built in 1932 for Cities Services Company, which would eventually become Citgo, later owned by AIG, now converted largely into residential condominiums. Its tiered spire rises to the 66th floor, where the former observation deck once offered the most vertiginous view in the Financial District. The red-marble lobby still commands the full block. The elevator bank is original. The building has witnessed a century of the neighborhood's transformations — from the financial district's post-war dominance to its near-abandonment in the 1970s and 1980s, to the residential conversion that has brought 62,000 people below Chambers Street.

James Kent grew up playing in these streets when they were still largely empty at night. He was a graffiti artist in this neighborhood before his mother steered him toward a kitchen — David Bouley's, to be specific. He came back to the Financial District in 2019 with Crown Shy on the ground floor of 70 Pine, and in 2021 with SAGA on the 63rd floor. The building that shaped him became the building that houses his finest work.

Kent spent eight years at Eleven Madison Park — through the period in which the restaurant received its three Michelin stars and climbed to number one on The World's 50 Best Restaurants. He became executive chef, then moved to The NoMad Hotel, where he held one star. His partner Jeff Katz was managing partner of Del Posto for thirteen years. Together, they describe SAGA as a contemporary reinterpretation of the fine dining restaurants where they started their careers — with some of the choreography stripped away, and the comfort turned up. No dress code. Green marble tables without linens. Peachy-pink carpet. R&B on the playlist. Fine dining that intends to be repeated, not merely recalled.

The interior design — by MN Design Professional Corporation — draws its central inspiration from two sources. The first: the secret residence of an imagined 1930s bonvivant and world traveler, each floor unfolding into a distinct atmosphere as one moves through the space. The second: the Turin home of Italian designer Carlo Mollino, which he is rumored to have worked on for twenty years without ever inhabiting or showing to the public. The rooms feel discovered rather than designed — velvet banquettes in peach and emerald, carved stone accents, green marble tables. Works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Egon Schiele, and Victor Vasarely appear as elements of the imagined home rather than pieces to be admired. The effect is that of entering a very beautiful apartment that belongs to someone with exceptional taste and no interest in explaining themselves.

The Financial District has changed more in the last twenty years than almost any other neighborhood in Manhattan — from a nine-to-five enclave of office towers to a residential neighborhood of 62,000 people, with the infrastructure of restaurants, bars, and cultural venues that follows. Danny Meyer's decision to open Manhatta on the 60th floor of 28 Liberty Street was, as Kent has acknowledged, the moment that convinced him the neighborhood was ready for SAGA. The two restaurants anchor a new vertical dining geography in Lower Manhattan — the highest concentrations of serious food in New York, above the streets where the city's financial history was written.