We watched as Brainin demonstrated proper plating of the kampachi, with mounds of radish sitting atop the fish, to one cook. Freedman was at the hostess stand, busily solving a seating problem. Five men who lived in the neighborhood wanted a table but didn’t have a reservation. They handed Freedman $100 (for the staff, they said), and she said she would see what she could do. After a minute, during which she added the money to the staff tip pool, she told the men she could seat them. They were ecstatic.

There was no chance that the first dinner at the Paris Café the next day would be nearly this seamless, but it was easy to imagine how much worse it would be if the Jean-Georges team weren’t running it. Shut out of the TWA Hotel, the cooks had been able to practice at ABC Kitchen and the Mercer and Jean-Georges itself. On opening day, the culinary trainers would help the greener members of the line. And they would all be presided over by the gram and the scale. Tomorrow, the Paris Café would probably be the worst of Vongerichten’s 38 restaurants, but it would still be one of the best restaurants in the city. “We have it down to a science with our team, with Lois and Greg and Danny and everybody,” Vongerichten said. “We know how to put it all together.”

In certain moods, Vongerichten will talk wistfully about the simpler days of having just one restaurant to run, when all he had to worry about was Lafayette or Jojo. Downsizing, if he could ever do it, could also provide the quickest path back to that third Michelin star: Critics want ceaseless innovation from a chef, but they also reward something closer to asceticism. The solitary genius, presiding over the counter with seven seats. It’s a more appealing story than the chef who can open seven restaurants in a year.

Vongerichten’s dilemma is that the drive that made Lafayette and Jean-Georges great is the same one that made it impossible to stop with just one or two restaurants. It’s the desire to say yes to everything, to solve every problem, to make everybody happy. “I went into this business,” he said, “because I love to pamper and tend to people.” If you had the ability to do that in 18 cities on four continents, rather than in one restaurant on Central Park, wouldn’t you?

It was dark now, and the lights shining on the Brooklyn Bridge reflected off the water. Brainin stepped back and admired the line at work. It never ceased to amaze him, he said, watching a kitchen come together. Three weeks ago, they could barely serve 20 meals without panicking. Now they were doing 140. “Opening a restaurant is like having a baby,” he said. “It’s a strenuous, arduous, complicated process. You’ve got to be sure that the baby can breathe on its own and eat on its own and walk on its own and grow on its own.” He would keep coming to the Fulton every night for a month. “After that I will be here at least once a week, you know, forever.”

With that, he turned back to the kitchen, where Poses and Vongerichten were conferring over a dish. If it wasn’t already perfect, it was a gram or two away at most.