Mention the name Paul Liebrandt and inevitably someone brings up the infamous dining room stunt: At the now-defunct Papillon restaurant, he made a splash by blindfolding dinner guests. Despite the fact that it only occurred twice and was, according to Mr. Liebrandt, his pastry chef’s idea, it’s a story he can’t shake. Now that he’s running the kitchen at the newly opened Gilt, in the Villard Mansion (formerly Le Cirque 2000), he’s got a more serious name for his handiwork: “The chef is very interested in molecular gastronomy,” as an enthusiastic waiter at Gilt intoned.

Molecular gastronomy – a term coined in the 1980s by French scientist Herve This and Oxford physics professor Nicholas Kurti – refers to the study of the chemistry of cooking, to discover how things really work. (At what exact temperature, for example, do the protein molecules in an egg change from liquid to solid?) It’s old hat to the culinary world outside of America. But the question is: Are New Yorkers interested in molecular gastronomy? More specifically, is Gotham finally ready for Mr. Liebrandt?

Mr. Liebrandt’s reputation began in September 2000, when at 24 years old he became chef at Atlas. There, he garnered a three-star review from the New York Times and a scathing review in Gourmet magazine.The disparity of those two reviews illustrated public reaction to Mr. Liebrandt’s highly innovative and modern approach: It changed your world – or you hated it.

Mr. Liebrandt left Atlas in December 2001 for Papillion, which garnered two stars. Though the restaurant stood out as a beacon for creative dining while the city was turning to comfort food, Mr. Liebrandt ultimately stood alone; the restaurant closed in November 2002. He spent the next three years consulting, working as a private chef for Prince Andrew and Lord Rothschild, and looking for a new restaurant.

At Gilt, Mr. Liebrandt finds himself in another high-profile kitchen. And his timing is better. The restaurant landscape has evolved significantly in the past few years. And even though simplicity rules on food television, the dining public’s knowledge and sense of adventure has moved forward, too.

Consider the global advent of Spain’s Ferran Adria of El Bulli, which earned three stars from Michelin and is perhaps the world’s toughest reservation to land. While Mr. Liebrandt was cooking at Atlas in 2000, Mr. Adria was virtually unknown in America. Then in 2002, Mr. Adria published “El Bulli 1998-2002,” an encyclopedic manual detailing every technique and dish created at the restaurant. Mr. Adria graced the cover of the New York Times Magazine in 2003 and was one of Time magazine’s 100 most innovative people in 2004. Interest in El Bulli triggered a culinary craze for all things Spanish, with magazines and newspapers dedicating issues to the topic.

Young chefs like Mr. Liebrandt acknowledge the shift. “Spain has affected everyone, everywhere in the world,” he said. Chef Wylie Dufresne, whose WD-50 has been a home of innovation since it opened in 2003, has felt the influence of Mr. Adria directly, as well. “His fame has opened up doors for people like me and Paul,” Mr. Dufresne said.

At the same time, the food press has demystified techniques like dehydration and sousvide, the French technique of vacuum-packing food in plastic bags and cooking it at low temperatures. There also has been greater attention directed at creative geniuses like Heston Blumenthal, who runs the three-star Michelinrated Fat Duck in Bray, England, and Pierre Gagnier, chef of the three-star Michelin-rated eponymous restaurant in Paris and one of Mr. Liebrandt’s mentors.

As for New York, the most pressing factor in the city’s dining habits has been changes in the economy. Restaurant revenues declined beginning in 2000, initially because of the Internet crash, then because of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The citywide retreat to easy, inexpensive dinning was reversed when Thomas Keller opened Per Se in the Time Warner Center in the spring of 2004. As the first new luxury eatery in years, Per Seheralded a return to ambitious fine dinning, of which Gilt is certainly part. The current economic mood is good news for Mr. Liebrandt – and the restaurant industry in general.

But that’s not all that has changed. “I’m different this time around,” Mr. Liebrandt, 29, said. “I’ve matured, and my food has matured. It’s more focused, but still playful and fun.”

His description of his work is “modern French.” But it’s more ambitious than that.

One dish in particular – the Peekytoe crab salad with sea herb glass – illustrates his interest in process. Dressed with yuzu, cooked egg white, and sancho pepper, a round quenelle of salad is topped with a paper-thin disc of clear gelee in which tiny, perfectly cut herbs are suspended. Creating the gelee involves making a broth of fresh clams, wheat beer, verbena, and herbs. It’s cooked sous-vide, then poured into ring molds. Chervil and tarragon leaves are placed into the gelatin with tweezers while it sets.

The menu at Gilt is loaded with complex yet minimal dishes like this. Here’s a little agaragar (the Japanese gelatin favored by chefs because it doesn’t melt at high temperatures), there’s some liquid nitrogen (which with its temperature of -321 degrees Fahrenheit is used to freeze food quickly and delicately). But the chef doesn’t want you to think about that. As he puts it: “I don’t want people to intellectualize things. Just ‘did you enjoy it?’ “

Gilt (455 Madison Ave. at 50th Street, 212-891-8100).