Le Bernardin

Midtown is full of restaurants that mattered once. Le Bernardin is the one that never stopped mattering, and you can tell because nothing in the room is trying to convince you of anything.It started in Paris in 1972 — a brother and sister, Gilbert and Maguy Le Coze — and crossed to New York in 1986. Gilbert died in 1994, far too young. Maguy handed the kitchen to Eric Ripert, who was in his twenties and could reasonably have sunk the whole thing. Instead he's held the pass for three decades and…