Palma

Palma opened with a tasting menu so spare it dared you to care about a single shrimp or a perfectly ripe zucchini — raw herbs and edible flowers folded into a lettuce leaf, that shrimp draped in a charred collard leaf like a tiny coat. It was a real idea, ingredients allowed to speak without much interference, but the restraint sometimes tipped into absence. Beautiful plates, not always enough food on them.

That version of Palma is gone. The tasting menu has sharpened its ambition and earned the price increase that came with it, and the kitchen added an a la carte menu that turns Palma into a place you can return to on a Tuesday, not just save for a special occasion. The ingredient-forward instinct is still there, but it now carries weight.

What Palma wants is for you to feel something tender about dinner, and it finally has the execution to deliver that instead of just the intention. Little Havana gets a fine-dining room that argues its case through the food, not through its own seriousness.

Michelin selected Palma for its guide, and the recognition tracks with a kitchen that grew into its ambitions instead of coasting on them.