The Oak Room (at the Plaza Hotel) (CLOSED)

This landmark restaurant inside the Plaza Hotel has shaken off its tourist trap manacles with new talent in the kitchen: Eric Hara. The nostalgic menu offers muted opulence in the form of an ethereal lasagna filled with Jerusalem artichoke cream and shrouded in shaved truffles. Waiters in pin-striped vests deliver updated classics, like a duck à l’orange—a whole breast in a sweet-sticky kumquat-mustard glaze, with candied kumquats and cheesy polenta on the side. Close the meal with a delicate chocolate cigar, which recalls the Oak Room’s beginnings as a smoky men’s club.