Thomas Keller opened Per Se in February 2004, on the fourth floor of what was then the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle — a glass tower overlooking the southwestern corner of Central Park. The location was chosen for its views of the city and the park, and for the particular quality of light that floods the dining room on a clear afternoon. Adam Tihany designed the interior, drawing subtle references to The French Laundry into every detail: the fieldstone, the fireplace, the warm neutral palette, the blue door. The dining room holds fifteen tables. The service team is calibrated to the same ratio of attention as Yountville. One does not feel the city below. One feels only the room.

Keller is the first and only American-born chef to hold multiple three-Michelin-star ratings simultaneously — for Per Se and for The French Laundry. He is also the first American male chef to be designated a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, the highest decoration France bestows. Per Se has held three Michelin stars since the inaugural New York guide in 2006. It has held them every year since, without interruption.

The dining room at Per Se is, by the Michelin Guide's assessment, impressively scaled for a city where space itself is a luxury. Fifteen tables, each positioned to offer views of Central Park and Columbus Circle while maintaining precious privacy from neighboring seats. Warm neutrals throughout. Natural elements integrated into the palette. A wine cellar and lounge adjacent, with plush banquettes overlooking the park. The East Room — a smaller space off the main dining room — offers a four-course salon menu for parties up to ten. The West Room accommodates private dining. All three spaces look onto the same view: Central Park extending north for fifty blocks, the city arranged around it like a frame.

Two nine-course tasting menus are offered daily in the main dining room — the Chef's Tasting and the Tasting of Vegetables, both built around classic French technique and the finest available seasonal ingredients, sourced from farmers and foragers the kitchen maintains ongoing relationships with. The menus change daily. The wine list holds more than 2,000 bottles, with particular attention to older vintages and small producers whose allocations are limited. The signature dish — Oysters and Pearls, a sabayon of pearl tapioca with Island Creek oysters and Osetra caviar — has been on the menu since the beginning. It remains one of the most discussed dishes in American fine dining, and one of the most consistently executed. The grand dessert finale closes every meal. What happens between those two bookends is, as the Michelin Guide put it, a mature study in confidence and class.

Keller's approach to hospitality is grounded in a conviction he has held throughout his career: that the details of an experience — the temperature of a plate, the timing of a course, the way a server enters a room — are not incidental to the quality of a meal. They are constitutive of it. Per Se reflects this in every decision, from the ratio of staff to tables to the calibration of lighting across the course of a service. Chad Palagi leads the kitchen as chef de cuisine, the restaurant's fourth to hold the position in twenty years — a continuity that reflects the stability Keller has built into the culture of the kitchen. The service is effortlessly choreographed, in the words of Per Se's Michelin citation — personable and gracious, lending warmth to a dinner that radiates class and comfort.

10 Columbus Circle places Per Se at the precise southwestern corner of Central Park — the same corner as Jean-Georges, one floor below. The park extends north. Lincoln Center is ten minutes on foot. The Upper West Side begins across the street. The address is one of the most considered in Midtown — not the most central, not the most visible, but the one that offers the specific combination of views, light, and remove from the city's densest traffic that Keller was looking for when he chose it in 2004. Twenty years later, the choice has proven correct in every particular.