Thirty-five years ago, Elizabeth Large, then the restaurant critic at The Sun, reviewed the Little Italy restaurant Velleggia’s, which had recently undergone a major renovation.

According to Large, at the time, it was practically unheard of for a restaurant to completely transform its physical space. “I’ve never known a successful restaurant to do what Velleggia’s in Little Italy did,” she wrote.

Today, on the other hand, that sort of undertaking is commonplace. In the current restaurant market where diners are informed, social media rules and genuinely good restaurants open regularly, even highly lauded, fairly new restaurants know better than to rest on their laurels.

Case in point: Puerto 511.