In the hush that settles over Carmel-by-the-Sea after five o’clock, a small dining room on Fifth Avenue begins its evening — a portrait of Chez Noir and the serious cooking inside it.

Fifteen years after arriving at Aubergine, Justin Cogley has built a two-Michelin-star restaurant of nine tables by doing the rarest thing in American cooking: staying put, paying attention, and letting the Monterey coastline speak.