2. The chic of LE CIRQUE’s pasta primavera in 1975 gets even our town’s French toques to the pasta pots. Soon they are reinventing ravioli.

4. A lot of us still thought tuna came only in cans till trying seared tuna with green peppercorns and creamy leeks at Barry and Susan Wine’s QUILTED GIRAFFE in 1982.

6. Though New York chefs seared foie gras (often smuggled from France and Israel) throughout the seventies, the first gaggle of Hudson Valley duck livers sets off a major sizzle in 1983. No liver is safe, especially our own. Barry Wine’s sauté rides on greens wilted in foie fat and Silver Palate fruit vinegar. LUTÈCE’S André Soltner serves his with caramelized apples. At the Westbury Hotel, Daniel Boulud thrills jaded voluptuaries with poached American foie gras and grapes in carved ice ducks.

8. Anne Rosenzweig’s lobster club at ARCADIA (l984) led to other fancy bites on toast: “I wanted to break barriers of luxury, to see mayonnaise dripping down the arms of Wall Street,” she says.

10. Raw fish and fresh fish barely cooked, olive-oil-lacquered raw black bass with basil and coriander, pounded tuna carpaccio, and poached halibut in warm vinaigrette at Gilbert and Maguy LeCoze’s LE BERNARDIN.

11. The melting chocolate cake. Was it Jean-George’s at JoJo in 1990? Tom Colicchio’s borrowing from France’s Michel Bras of melting ganache at MONDRIAN? Or Bill Yosses’s hot Valrhona-chocolate soufflé at David Bouley’s MONTRACHET (1985)?