Ãngel Franco/The New York Times  THE DESTINATION The redesigned dining room of Nougatine at Jean Georges. More Photos »  YES, Nougatine. You didn’t forget about it, did you?  I hope not. So does Jean-Georges Vongerichten, who established it 15 years ago as the easygoing bistro next door to the demure elegance of Jean Georges, Audrey Tautou to the flagship’s Catherine Deneuve. Since then, New Yorkers have come to rely on Nougatine at Jean Georges, to give the name that nobody ever uses, for working lunches that could be expensed without waking up the auditors, yet they also tended to take it for granted. It has never been reviewed before in The New York Times, and it rarely comes up in conversations about favorite Vongerichten restaurants, although it is one of the most dependable.  Part of the trouble is that it can be hard to say just what kind of place Nougatine is. There’s that slightly embarrassing name, which suggests a shop that sells chocolates or lingerie or maybe both. There’s the menu, roaming from burgers and fries to foie gras with a hotel-lobby inclusiveness.  But the biggest reason Nougatine never quite emerged from the long shadow of its sister may have been its design, meant originally as a hotel lounge. Particularly after Jean Georges was brought up to date by the architect Thomas Juul-Hansen several years ago, Nougatine resembled an afterthought. It was as if Nougatine were meant to make the diners who passed through on their way to Jean Georges feel better about what they were about to spend, the way a glimpse past the curtains into the shantytown in the back of a plane reassures first-class passengers.  Then in April, Mr. Vongerichten brought Mr. Juul-Hansen in to redo everything but the floors. Suddenly, Nougatine feels like a destination. It’s a livelier, more kinetic space than Jean Georges; there’s a long, mail-slot window into the kitchen where you can see the cooks, and often Mr. Vongerichten. A mirror right above the mail slot, and another window behind the cooks that looks out on Broadway, roughly doubles the energy at that end of the room.  Gone now are the blocky woven-back chairs and the lounge tables that looked as if they’d been left behind by a percussionist on his way to a drum circle in Central Park. The furniture is more graceful now, with echoes of Charles and Ray Eames in the creamy leather chairs and walnut tabletops. There’s a bit of Rat Pack-era verve; the skinny pendant lights above the bar even look like smoldering cigarettes. (Nougatine’s newfound glamour is weakest at the low and awkward tables along the wall between the bar and the kitchen; after the hosts recognized me, they went to some lengths to avoid seating me there.)  Despite Nougatine’s night-on-the-town gloss, though, the soul of the menu is not far from what you might cook at home — or, to be more realistic, what Mr. Vongerichten might cook if you came to his apartment on Perry Street. If the weather was hot, he might cut open a watermelon, whittle it down to cubes, arrange them in a circle like a pink Stonehenge, and scatter white fluffs of goat cheese all around. This almost preposterously simple appetizer soars above salad-bar level thanks to good green olive oil and a sly kick of cracked white pepper.  After that, if you were effusive in your praise of Mr. Vongerichten’s collection of toasters, he might grill you a pork chop, then surround it with fruity habanero sauce made with cherries in early summer, or plums as fall nears. Comfortable as this down-home bone-in chop and this emphatically spicy condiment would feel in a home kitchen, they are almost unimaginable next door at Jean Georges.  Nor would any restaurant of Jean Georges’s aspirations send out Nougatine’s massive, handsomely trimmed whole globe artichoke, as imposing as Vitali Klitschko’s fist, and ask you to pull it apart with your hands to dip leaves and bites of heart in a lemony, mustardy chervil mayonnaise. Too bad, because it’s a treat.  A few dishes look so casual they seem to have been whipped up by Mr. Vongerichten and his chef de cuisine, Mark Lapico, after a morning run to the farmers’ market, like the crisp chicken breast with summer squash and very gently roasted tomatoes. Does it sound ordinary? Try making it yourself, then go to Nougatine and get back to me.  On a menu as wide ranging as Nougatine’s, which must cater to guests in the Trump International Hotel upstairs, there must be a few slackers. I liked the idea of Cantonese-style salt-and-pepper lobster, and the warm cabbage slaw that came with it, more than I liked the chewy lobster meat itself. Still, that was a better use for the shellfish than the “lobster burger,” interred, bizarrely, under green chile mayonnaise and a blanket of melted Gruyère. And if a French-born chef serves fries, you expect more than the pale and not terribly crunchy ones at Nougatine. (For a refresher in how to cook a potato, look no further than the spectacularly crisped wedges that come with a good but unthrilling strip loin.)
A redesign of the room, once meant as a hotel lounge, has allowed Nougatine to stand proudly next to its well-known sister restaurant, Jean Georges.