SAN FRANCISCO — By avoiding originality, In Situ is the most original new restaurant in the country.

The restaurant opened a month ago inside the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, in a space off the lobby that was built during the museum’s transformative recent expansion. Inside, the chef, Corey Lee, faithfully replicates dishes dreamed up by Sean Brock, Alice Waters and other innovators. None of the recipes are his own.

As one of the managers told a group of people interested in renting out the restaurant for the night when I ate there this month, “The easiest way to understand this restaurant is as an art installation.” Strangely enough, they didn’t appear frightened by that statement. Even more strangely, it makes some kind of sense once you eat at In Situ.

Mr. Lee’s concept — for once, the industry jargon is apt — sidesteps some basic assumptions about what chefs are supposed to do. In Situ’s closest peer in this regard is probably Next, the Chicago restaurant founded by Grant Achatz that inhabits a new period and style of cooking every four months. Each chef, of course, has another restaurant that works as a showpiece for his own expressive temperament. For Mr. Achatz, that is Alinea. For Mr. Lee, it is Benu, a short walk from In Situ, where he offers some of the most exquisitely varied and controlled tasting menus I’ve ever had; his cooking there runs variations on Chinese, Korean and Japanese dishes that are possible only because he seems to understand each one so thoroughly.

There are more famous chefs in the United States, but few whose technical mastery is as deeply respected in the business. “I couldn’t have more faith in anyone than Corey Lee, in terms of execution,” the chef Wylie Dufresne said.