Gretchen Ertl for The Boston Globe

In 2008, L'Espalier moved from its cramped, romantic Gloucester Street brownstone to a modern space adjacent to the Mandarin Oriental hotel. It has grown into its new surroundings.

Gretchen Ertl for The Boston Globe

Dishes are built on classic foundations. After that, they are Gehry constructions, recognizable but with new angles and perspectives. For instance, crab salad comes rolled in a tight cigar, set beside a tempura soft-shell crab on a field of carrot-cayenne gelee in a gleeful Sunkist hue. The dish is drizzled in plankton vinaigrette.

Gretchen Ertl for The Boston Globe

Warm Wellfleet oysters are served in vermouth sauce with smoked bone marrow, charred leeks, and samphire, also known as sea bean. It's an elegant dish carefully built, Maine's oyster stew wearing opera gloves.

Gretchen Ertl for The Boston Globe

Simple classics like roast chicken become something more. The dish is plated with restraint but exploding with flavor: slices of the juiciest, most crisp-skinned chicken, scattered morel mushrooms with foie gras mousse, dabs of smoked pommes puree, a drizzle of jus.

Gretchen Ertl for The Boston Globe

Desserts are inventive. Fromage blanc mousse is covered by what appears to be a dehydrated raspberry Fruit Roll-Up. Beneath are small pieces of intensely flavored rhubarb and almond fennel cake, with raspberry frozen yogurt on the side.

Gretchen Ertl for The Boston Globe

Another dessert looks like a child's building toy, a green log stacked on a green block beside pink cylindrical segments. Taste it and it rearranges itself into something more familiar -- pistachio cake topped with a cylinder of excellent pistachio ice cream, beside red currant panna cotta.

Gretchen Ertl for The Boston Globe

Slow-poached halibut sits atop pea fricassee, surrounded by dollops of warm lemon curd and fragrant snips of fresh herbs, wisps of chamomile foam floating across the surface. It's a landscape painting on a plate, and the flavors conjure spring, fresh, bright, and light.

Gretchen Ertl for The Boston Globe

For true art, one need look no further than L'Espalier's four-star cheese cart. It encompasses the mild and the stinky, the creamy and the blue, the local and the far-flung, and it is a cheese lover's dream.