A once-in-a-generation financial crisis might not be the best time to open a restaurant by Alain Ducasse, the international chef who redefined opulence at his eponymous New York restaurant earlier this decade (think jackets required, water sommeliers and three-course menus for $150).

Indeed, even that restaurant has now closed, Ducasse having decamped to the St. Regis hotel in New York, under the name Adour. Now, he’s done likewise in Washington, setting up shop at our own recently refurbished St. Regis.