Vetri is a small establishment (36 seats total), but it features an extraordinary wine list containing 500 labels and 5,000 bottles. The menu offers plenty of inventive dishes such as asparagus flan, crispy sweetbreads and foie gras pastrami. The carpaccio here is sliced at your table, and the whole roasted bronzino, a specialty for two, will melt in your mouth.

The average meal may head north of $200 per person for food and wine, but it's still worth experiencing one of George Perrier's sumptuous six-course meals, offering options such as the cassolette d'escargot in champagne, signature crab cakes, palette-cleansing sorbets and the "world famous dessert cart"—which features a caramel and chocolate mousse layered between hazelnut dacquoise discs.

Named "two chimneys" for the side-by-side 19th-century townhouses that make up this elegant French restaurant, Deux Cheminées showcases gas fireplaces that burn during the winter months. The restaurant offers an $85 four-course prix fixe menu; diners should order the creamless mushroom soup or share the rack of lamb with truffle-filled Perigord sauce. Ask to see the owner's collection of more than 8,000 cookbooks on the upper floors.

The ceviche here changes regularly, but whether it is Ecuadorian shrimp with avocado or red snapper with roasted beets and pickled lamb's tongue, ¡Pasión!'s award-winning chef Guillermo Pernot serves his Nuevo Latino cuisine "from Cuba to Argentina" in a lush, positively tropical dining room. Not to be missed: the "24-hour" suckling pig and braised baby goat.

The Iron Chef tantalizes diners with lavish sushi plates and all kinds of Asian-fusion fare, including eight-spice lobsters and ishi yaki buri bop, a yellowtail prepared tableside. Try a Morimoto Martini, made with sake, or the grapefruit vodka and green tea cocktail. The ambiance is ultra hip, with interconnected clear booths that change color to a groovy beat.