Restaurant review, Nouvelle Ripert.

Is that French hip-hop I’m hearing?” asked one of my slightly disoriented guests as we cooled our heels in the posh little “lounge” area, one of many new features of the slightly disorienting 2.0 version of the great midtown restaurant Le Bernardin. There used to be no racy backbeat nor even a proper lounge area at Le Bernardin, of course. The old front of the house included a bar so small that you were discouraged from sitting at it and a couch or two where you could perch while waiting to collect your coat. There used to be no lounge menu, either (the new one includes a $35 caviar-and-salmon croque monsieur, and Eric Ripert’s homage to the American lobster roll, truffled and served “en brioche” for $19), nor a selection of signature cocktails with names like MLC Mezcal and French Connection, which have been designed for this regal midtown seafood palace by the mixologist Greg Seider, the owner of Summit Bar down on Avenue C.

These radical changes, plus many more, are the result of an elaborate and well-publicized makeover designed to make Le Bernardin more accessible to what longtime co-owner Maguy Le Coze describes as the restaurant’s “younger clientele.” The distinctive old oil paintings of French fishermen and Brittany seascapes have been packed away and replaced with tobacco-brown latticework and a large triptych of a stormy wash of waves by the Brooklyn artist Ran Ortner. The lovely coffered wood ceiling is still intact, but the rug is now gray and the windows are covered in shimmery metal-and-bamboo treatments. The new, slightly clunky hotel-lobby-style chairs are made from shiny steel and covered in dark, cigar-colored leather, and the ocean-blue vests and ties the waitstaff used to wear have been replaced with modish Nehru jackets that look like they’ve been lifted from the wardrobe of the Green Hornet’s sidekick, Kato.

“I’m still getting used to this,” said Mrs. Platt as we were led to our table under one of the towering, twig-filled botanical arrangements that dominate the center of the restaurant’s more modern, but slightly more generic-looking, dining room. That’s the danger of a full-body makeover, of course. As any legendary brand from Coke to Mercedes-Benz knows, you may attract a new kind of clientele when you tinker with the venerable old formulas, but you also risk baffling your devoted followers. The new room, designed by the architectural firm Bentel & Bentel, which also did the Danny Meyer restaurants Gramercy Tavern and the Modern, is more commodious than before (there are fewer tables). But the postmodern touches (the tinny, upbeat soundtrack, the hard-edged art, the gleaming new plates by Bernardaud) make the space feel busier and more hectic, and the essential stately character (the “Frenchness,” as Mrs. Platt put it) of the old restaurant is gone.

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