The Four Seasons Restaurant came about when Bronfman hired Joseph Baum Restaurant Associates to make a restaurant to add value to the building. He decided to highlight American cuisine. Mimi Sheraton was on the research and testing team for the menu. The restaurant cost $4.5 million to open. It should be compared to the Guggenheim Museum which cost $3 million and was built at roughly the same time. It was the first restaurant to offer meals that changed with the seasons and was famous for its power lunches – JFK`s 45th Birthday dinner was held there.
More recently there was a new renovation by Annabelle Seldorf in 2018.
The Four Seasons in 1960, one year after it opened. In its time, it was the most modern, the most daring, the most New York restaurant the city had ever seen
Philip Johnson, who shaped the architecture of the Four Seasons, celebrated his 95th birthday there in 2001. The restaurant was defined visually by the confident modernism of the Seagram Building, where it was located