Chef Garrett Lipar is back.

If that sentence doesn’t immediately elicit excitement, it’s likely because you weren’t one of the lucky few who ate at Torino, Lipar’s shooting star of a restaurant, during its brief run in Ferndale.

You aren’t alone.

I missed my chance, too, having relocated to the West Coast for the entirety of what has been described to me with every superlative imaginable by anyone and everyone who ever experienced Torino’s gastronomic heights. (Among other accolades, Torino was named the 2014 Free Press Restaurant of the Year and Lipar twice earned semi-finalist nods in the Rising Star Chef of the Year category of the James Beard Awards.)

Lipar’s new venture, the eight-seat tasting counter Albena, opened up its reservation books a few weeks back and served its first guests Aug. 24. I went exactly one week later to get an early glimpse of the much-hyped restaurant — if only to put a physical sensation to what had hitherto been something akin to local folklore or myth.

It’s too early yet for a full review, but I find myself days later still thinking about that singular meal and the post-rock progression across 10 plates that hit a crescendo with an explosion of surprising textures and flavors in a sorbet dish somewhere in the gray area between entree and dessert.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start from the first note.

Like many other high-end multi-course tasting menu dining experiences, Albena — named for Lipar's 96-year-old grandmother — does not accept regular dinner reservations. Instead, “tickets” for dinner are purchased online in advance and run $130 per person. (A wine pairing can be added during dinner for $45.)

You don’t know the menu in advance nor have much of a say in it, though the restaurant can cater to guests with some restrictive diets and certain food allergies. (Vegetarians welcome; vegans look elsewhere.) The menu will change seasonally — wholesale about once a quarter — with smaller tweaks made in between as ingredients go in and out.

Albena’s main entrance is in the alley behind the Siren Hotel, the new name for the painstakingly restored Wurlitzer Building downtown. Unlike the rest of the hotel, which could easily double as a Wes Anderson film set in the 1950s, the eight-seat Albena space is modern and minimalist — a longish capsule of a room with a simple vaulted ceiling, a long gray counter with high-top seating and a gleaming new kitchen backed by intentionally askew wall tiles in the “wabi-sabi” style that also informs the earthy plateware.

At Torino, Lipar was limited by the old coffee shop’s diminutive space and lack of cold storage, the latter which was the ultimate reason for its closing. But perhaps that was also part of its magic. Albena is a double-down on that approach, with an even smaller space and a staff of just three: the chef, his longtime partner and general manager Tiffany Henderson and sous chef Emma Taylor.

Upon entering, you are immediately greeted with calmness. Mellow instrumental music and a subtle scent reminiscent of sandalwood — a proprietary fragrance developed by local perfumers Sfumato — fill the air.

Unlike other orchestrated tasting menus, not everyone sets sail at the same time. If you arrive early for your 5:45 p.m. reservation, you won’t have to wait for other parties to get started. And unlike some other drawn-out affairs of this nature, you’ll still be able to make your 7:30 show after dinner, which is designed to last just 90 minutes.

Pacing is brisk but unhurried, and there’s a meditative quality to the entire meal.

Have you ever paused to consider the inherent complexity of flavor in raw summer squash? You will, thanks in part to Lipar’s masterful orchestration demanding you pay attention.

We started with a rustic stone bowl of tamagoyaki (a type of rolled Japanese omelet) topped with a shocking green puree — herbaceous salsa verde — and hen-of-the-woods mushrooms that had been shallow-fried in duck fat with garlic and oregano and then dehydrated to a satisfying crisp.

“Welcome to Albena,” Lipar said with what sounded like a hint of relief in his voice as he presented the first course. (The restaurant was slated to debut a year-and-a-half ago in another space; it’s been a long journey to open.)

Next came the playful caviar course: Japanese eggplant brined in what Lipar calls last year’s market ferment, all hiding under a swarm of orb-like okra seeds — an acidic pickled note and textural shift from the custard-and-crisp of course one.

Then comes a large earthen brown plate mostly composed of negative space. On one side, shingles of very lightly cooked Ronde de Nice squash are plastered together with bean paste and topped with squash seeds that have been bathing in an apple-cider vinaigrette infused with serrano pepper oil. It only takes a few bites to eat but only after you finish do you notice the subtle spice that now lingers on the palate in its absence.

If dinner is a narrative arc, consider this the end of act one and the beginning of act two, where flavors become more complex and layered while evoking some of the most common and comfortable food memories at once.

The act begins with the humble chicken salad, reimagined. A white plate arrives with two translucently pink footballs resting in a shallow pool of clear brown sauce holding a few pickled gooseberries. The footballs turn out to be fine slices of shallot steamed in its shell and laid on like petals masking minced chicken salad, which pops with salty bursts of chicken skin and sneaky sweet notes of tarragon.

Then comes a beautiful course of sweet summer corn pudding studded with pickled blueberries and topped with chile-laden corn crumble, purple starflowers and briny oyster leaf. In one scoop you might get sweet, tangy, smoky, salty, soft and crunchy sensations all at once — but the aftertaste is undeniably that of movie theater popcorn.

The dramatic climax, however, comes after what might be considered the main course — an expertly cooked beef brisket — if this were a traditional restaurant (which it wholly is not).

A black stone bowl is delivered with shards of crispy meringue made of tomato skins and cinnamon that cloak the surprise underneath: a jewel box of tomato and stone-fruit sorbet and little orbs of peach, plum, huckleberry and the ever-so-tiny red currant tomatoes. A tangy creme fraiche reminiscent of yogurt is the final surprise at the very bottom of the bowl. Every bite is different from the last on the savory to sweet spectrum depending on your scoop. It is a trick for the mind just as much as the palate — a dish I won’t soon, if ever, forget.

It’s difficult to summarize Lipar’s food in one word. “Modernist” still doesn’t quite capture it, just as it hadn’t for my predecessor Sylvia Rector when she was searching for words to describe Torino. “A minimalist approach to progressive dining” is how it’s described on the Albena website, but that undersells it a bit.

Lipar’s background in the New Nordic style comes through via fermenting and foraging, but the Michigan chef eschews the rigid Nordic hyperlocality to recognize ingredients that may not be native to the Great Lakes despite growing here now. Did you know that the Asian pineapple weed grows wild along Michigan roadsides and can be used to flavor marshmallows? You will if you dine at Albena anytime soon.

Albena is both meticulous and minimalist, but earnest and connected to the earth in a way that the modernists often lack.

"None of those things are what we’re trying to do," Lipar told me later, when asked about the modernist and Nordic labels often applied to his cooking. "None of those things are where we’re finding our source of inspiration. At this point we’re just trying to tell our own story. I don’t know what that means because we’re at an early stage at this point.”

But something Lipar said four years ago when Torino was crowned Restaurant of the Year still rings true at Albena. “By the end of the meal you’re neither hungry nor full,” he told the Free Press then. “You have no desire to be anywhere else but where you are. ... You should never need something here. Everything’s thought out.”

I've only had one meal at Albena, but I’ve never felt so content after a dinner of this style. Neither overfed nor underfed. Just good and nourished and stimulated and excited to go back.

The local dining scene has evolved immensely in the three years since Lipar last ran a kitchen in metro Detroit and Albena is likely to garner endless comparisons to Thomas Lents’ Chef’s Table at the Detroit Foundation Hotel — the 2018 Restaurant of the Year — based on its format. I'm here to tell you that the two experiences are markedly different and that there's a space — and need — for both in Detroit.

To be clear, this isn’t a restaurant catering specifically to Detroiters, though locals are more than welcome. Rather, Albena’s audience is global by design and Lipar's stage is the world.

He may have put his name on the map at Torino, but with Albena, he’s out to redraw the map itself.

I can't wait to see where it goes.

Albena

1509 Broadway, Detroit (inside The Siren Hotel).

Dinner only Wed.-Sun.

Minimalist, ingredient-driven multi-course tasting menu at eight-seat chef's counter inside tucked-away boutique hotel space.

Tickets are $130 per person and must be purchased in advance at albenadetroit.com.

Optional wine pairing available for $45.

Contact Free Press Restaurant Critic Mark Kurlyandchik: 313-222-5026 or mkurlyandc@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @mkurlyandchik and Instagram: curlyhandshake.