It was a surprise when Brett “Shaggy” Duffee left the kitchen at Karen Carrier’s eclectic Beauty Shop, in Cooper-Young, and headed for the eastern reaches of Germantown and Equestria, a restaurant with a long up-and-down reputation of being different things to different people. (Former Equestria chef Kevin Rains now presides at Roustica, where Marena’s used to be in Midtown.) So, perhaps a surprise but not an undeserved change for a talented chef.

Of course, Equestria is not Beauty Shop and Germantown is not Cooper-Young, so Duffee has tailored a menu that’s a bit more sedate than what patrons of Beauty Shop expected. Who would quibble, however, about a ramekin filled with white beans and tender rabbit meat and shavings of pungent black truffle under a crunchy breadcrumb and pecorino chapeau (”Rabbit Cassolette”). Or a special appetizer one night, a redolent and spicy duck, sausage and mushroom gumbo?

Duffee rubs a rib-eye steak with annatto seed (from the anchiote tree, popular in Latin American and Caribbean cuisine), grills it as requested and serves it with a slice of Cabrales cheese, an almond and morel mushroom reduction and melt-in-yer-mouth croquettes made of Serrano ham and Gruyere cheese. Nothing too restrained there, though more straightforward is the pork osso buco (the shank) served with crisp roasted fennel, a bacon and red onion marmelade and polenta. The servings, by the way, are more than generous.

A good way to end a meal is with a wedge of a delectable pecan tart.

Now Equestria is not cheap. Appetizers are $10 to $17, entrees $26 to $36, nor does the wine list shirk prices at least two times the retail price or more. The place looks comfortable and inviting, a bit masculine, and as “casually elegant” as the restaurant’s website suggests. Service is polite, decorous, even rather serious.

And that’s where my question comes in. On our first visit to the restaurant, sitting not far from us, were two couples dining together. One of the men wore a red baseball-type cap, and he kept it on his head the entire time eating dinner. Now I realize that the world is a far more casual place than it was 15 or 20 years ago, yet in a restaurant where dinner for two, with a good bottle of wine, can run over $200, where the waiters, dressed in black, ply their trade with solemn discretion, where the lighting and atmosphere suggest elegance and intimacy — wouldn’t you think a guy could take off his cap for an hour or two? Or are people so casual nowadays that they’re completely oblivious to mood and tone and propriety?