Union Square Cafe

Danny Meyer and his team do a deft job of sprinkling some of the old magic fairy dust around this barn-size Park Avenue reboot of his seminal flagship restaurant. It’s especially evident behind the scenes in the kitchen, where the chef, Carmen Quagliata, manages to preserve the sensibility of the original menu while reworking it in a variety of inventive, updated ways. Many of the familiar old favorites, like the pastas and the fried calamari, have been enlivened with an extra ingredient or two, and a first-ever Union Square Cafe house baker is now on staff to supply a steady stream of warm, fresh goodies to the new, much larger, more populist crowd of regulars. If you miss the intimacy of the old joint, belly up to the little bar on the third floor, which is fashioned from wood salvaged from the iconic original on 16th Street.