There are still chef’s hats in this city, if you know where to look. I don’t mean the silly, synecdochic meaning of “chefs.” I mean literal chef’s hats, high and crispy like meringues, with their lofty connotations of French expertise and blood-earned culinary art. In one recent week, I saw eight of them. They stood atop the ranks of rank-and-file cooks in competing chef-counter restaurants, signaling the ambition and aura of their establishments as immediately as the price tag of about $400 per person after tax and tip. At César in Soho and the Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare in Hell’s Kitchen, the higher the hat, the closer to God.

These restaurants are two of the newest takes on the New York luxury tasting menu, a genre that has stalled a bit of late. The four-figure dinner for two may still be alive—those with money to spend have always found extravagant places to spend it—but some of the haute couture restaurants of yore have closed (Ko) or been renovated (Blanca, now under the helm of Victoria Blamey). César is new and Brooklyn Fare was recently renovated, though both restaurants have pedigrees the others don’t. Neither would be here without the original Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare in the original Brooklyn, a tiny tasting room attached to a grocery store across from the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station. In 2009, César Ramirez began whipping up 19 courses a night from a shabby prep kitchen, which, it seemed, was both out of compulsion and design – after honing his craft under David Bouley, he simply couldn’t noteven under relatively minor circumstances. The risk was rewarded; in 2010 the restaurant earned two Michelin stars. In 2012, Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare was upgraded to three stars (the same year as Eleven Madison Park) and topped the Restaurant of the Year lists.

Yet 2024 is a long way from 2012, both in time and in spirit. And many of the hallmarks of voluptuous excess that characterized Ramirez and Brooklyn Fare’s cuisine then—prime ingredients flown in from around the world, hushed celebration, a parade of individual, exquisite bites—characterize Ramirez and Brooklyn Fare’s cuisine today, even if Ramirez and Brooklyn Fare’s cuisines are out of sync today. Last year, Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare abruptly closed, prompting a barrage of lawsuits between Ramirez and its owner, Moneer Issa, with both sides alleging defamation, unpaid wages, theft, and abuse of office. From the ashes have risen two tasting menu temples: Ramirez’s César and a revived Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare, now under the helm of two of Ramirez’s former deputies, Max Natmessnig and Marco Prins.

César is in a blond wood oasis behind gauzy curtains on Hudson Street; Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare, a more caramel-colored counter, itself hidden in a well-stocked convenience store, now in Manhattan. (Ramirez originally moved with him in 2016; the entrance is just past the tea bags and a tower of LaCroix.) The atmosphere in both is more like a spa than a restaurant; despite a radio rock soundtrack (“Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” by pulp Fiction came while I was dining at César), there was an almost rueful silence in the rooms. At César, a couple sitting next to me, I think, hardly spoke a word to each other during the entire dinner, preferring to quietly photograph each course that was presented to them with professional digital SLR cameras. The couple a few steps away at Brooklyn Fare soon began parallel discussions on their iPhones.

That’s not the fault of the cuisine, which—in both—remains precise, elaborate, and baroque. The seeming need to reward money-hungry diners with boastful ingredients can detract from the surprise that a great meal can offer; of course there’s A5 Wagyu, langoustines, Hokkaido uni, and scoops of caviar. Even the preparation can be similar, a reminder that both descend from a common parent. One of Ramirez’s famous originals was a truffled uni toast served on a buttered brioche. After delighting spenders of the last decade, it returns at César to delight this year’s, so no one gets too little for their money; and a version also crops up at Brooklyn Fare, where the brioche is replaced by a waffle stick (recipe courtesy of Dutchman Prins’s grandmother) and showered with his own snow of shaved black truffle. (The waiter will tell you where in Australia the best truffle season is.)

Every counter has its surprises. I never thought I could fall for smoked eel rillettes until I fell in love with Ramirez’s, puffing on a tiny cigarette made of tuile—and I don’t think I’ll do that again, unless eel rillettes become a big hit, which I doubt. Some of his flavor and texture combinations are exponentially delicious, and completely undervalued by the elliptical menu that comes upon request: “Live Norwegian langoustine with caviar caviar” doesn’t even hint at the cod mousse underneath or the basil gelée above, a Pacific parfait. At Brooklyn Fare, I enjoyed a single Maine scallop in a sauce of yellow wine — the oxidative white wine from the Jura — and the fig leaf oil, as well as the way the finger lime flesh and trout roe clattered together like springy lime bladders around an escabeche of Japanese snapper.

So why did I leave these restaurants feeling satiated but dissatisfied? Their chefs have earned their chef’s hats; their cooking is impeccable. It’s the pampering coldness that I don’t like, the cool, placeless ambience of absolute luxury. (At César, I saw a woman in a Dior tracksuit sit alone for twenty minutes until her date came back to wrap her in a Hermès blanket.) In neither restaurant did I feel connected to New York; we could have been at any blonde counter in any financial capital in the world.

It’s hard to blame the talented chefs and staff, who move around knowledgeably and accommodatingly. None of the restaurants seem to be suffering. After years of supporting a Brooklyn Fare, New York City seems perfectly capable of supporting two restaurants: by the middle of August week, all were full. They’re not the most expensive outings in town—dinner at Yoshino is still $500 per person—but even so, as intended, they remain out of reach for all but the wealthiest or most willing. What are the rest of us missing out on? After a week as a tourist, I can attest: quality cuisine, but cold comfort.