Minh Bui’s degustation menu at 56 DEGREES is filled with solid themes representing a thread of consistent ideas throughout a well-crafted book.

Columns marbled gray and white climbed from the tile floor to the 30-foot, museum-white ceiling. About halfway up, black beams traveled from column to column, holding the room down like a suspended paperweight. A bartender swiped at the black lacquer bar with a white bar towel, the black-suited manager opened a bottle of white wine at the next table and a dark, classical march played like an army of soldiers advancing from speakers close to my ear.

  I was resting my gray-sleeved forearms on the black-leather chair when the kitchen turned on the color: wet slices of beefsteak tomato peeled and peppered; lanky spears of emerald asparagus split lengthwise; hard-cooked quail eggs cut open like four yellow eyes; a scattering of sweet corn and the diaphanous yellow gloss of preserved lemon vinaigrette. From this first course of a degustation menu at 56 Degrees to the meal’s end, bright colors and the vigor of nearly unembellished flavors leveled the air in the majestic, 110-year-old bank.

  Chef-owner Minh Bui began serving breakfast and lunch at 56 Degrees last September, after he and the Wyndham Hotel finished renovations in the historic Whitney Bank building. Dinner followed in December, and the degustation menu arrived with Lundi Gras. The six courses comprise a sampling of ever-changing appetizers, a full-size entree and a choice between two desserts. It was clear at the start that Bui was up to something different from the French-Vietnamese cuisine of his Lemon Grass Restaurant in the nearby International House Hotel.

  It’s rarely a bad idea to order a chef’s deliberately composed nightly menu. Degustations are usually economical, given the amount of food they involve, and they provide the most comprehensive taste of a chef’s talent. But in this case, it was more than bang for the buck or variety that sold me. The draw of Bui’s degustation was rather that it demonstrated solid themes – of color, unmuddled flavors and a reverence for produce. The progression of these themes with each plate resembled a thread of consistent ideas throughout a well-crafted book. Eating the evening’s degustation at 56 Degrees was like savoring a story about the passion that drove the chef to create it.

  A mighty, grilled breast of quail followed the first course, a humorous tagalong to the tomato salad’s tiny eggs from the same bird. The dark breast meat joined a peppery mix of unadorned lentils cooked just to al dente. The bright green of uncooked spinach leaves and one plump grapefruit section lent raw, juicy color. A drizzle of deep port wine syrup strung it all together.

  When presented with fresh, nearly unembellished but perfectly cooked compositions, I envision the chef taking an inventory of ingredients at the start of the day. I imagined Bui pressing every tomato to find the ripest few, sorting through asparagus for the most pencil-thin and scanning a mottled batch of green beans before finally choosing lentils.

  I imagined a similar process for pairing pink slabs of ahi tuna seared rare, a twirl of prepared seaweed salad and an Asian-inspired vinaigrette with a massive pile of cool, lump crabmeat. The crab stood proud on its innate sweetness alone, perhaps added as a generous afterthought so it wouldn’t go to waste in the cooler. The beauty in these thoughts is that, purely through taste and ideal flavor combinations, a chef can coax a diner to attempt to envision how a dish came to be.

  A few choices, including adding an appetizer, will raise the price of Bui’s $56 degustation menu. The investment bought the most unlikely and luscious preparation of foie gras I’ve encountered: A piece the size of a $10 bill lounged over warmed chunks of mango and pineapple. When fork hit liver, the latter oozed a rich, pinkish coating over the geometric fruits like butter melting into every crevice of a biscuit. Again, this dish exemplified the great color, ode to produce and barely cooked impressions of previous selections.

  The only real exception to these themes that evening was a strictly brown presentation of braised veal cheek with mashed potatoes. Somehow, I still didn’t leave a single bite behind.

  And although I have neither harsh complaints about the fresh fruit dessert plate, nor the other one of imported chocolates and small sweets, I don’t have gushing reports, either. Better to opt for a fine, loose-leaf tea brewed and served in a French press, or a glass from Bui’s wine list featuring many small producers and hard-to-find bottles like California’s Caymus Conundrum. Fifty-six degrees is the optimum temperature at which to store wine, after all (and they do).

  By the evening’s end, nothing tangible in the opulent expanse had changed. But the staff was full of humor, and Bui’s new, modern American cuisine had balanced the room’s heaviness in a way that actually brought it to life – as if the space was an artist’s canvas instead of the static museum it had felt like before the food intervened. The difference was enough to consider dining in the bank’s former vault reserved for private parties … almost.