Back in 2012, when the jet-setter franchise Le Baron planted three floors of Parisian cool and a garrote-like velvet rope on a sleepy curl of Chinatown, many people assumed New York night life was entering an era of glamour amid Gitanes smoke. It closed three summers later.

Straylight, a cocktail bar below a Japanese restaurant called Juku, opened in the same building in March, with less fanfare and fewer Scarlett Johansson sightings. Have times changed enough for Straylight to thrive where Le Baron perished?

“It’s a destination, but in some ways, it’s at the center of everything,” said Max Levai, an owner of Juku, who runs the Marlborough Contemporary gallery in Chelsea. (He was also an owner of Happy Ending, which recently reopened as Better Days.) On a recent Saturday, he led a tour through Straylight’s innards. “The space had this sort of allure,” he said. “It’s windowless.”