Le Bernardin>Nougatine(i worked for jean georges too)
Pizza: Lombardi's is the best(in my opinion)
Shake Shack ftw if you're willng to wait in those lines
forget noodle bar and ippudo, head to lam zhou handmade noodle in chinatown. great noodles for a great price and they pull them to order.

wtf? is the sasabune the same as the one in LA? that's been my favorite sushi meal ever.

ham on rye,
Thanks for all the advice. As I mentioned most people going are super busto and 3 people are vegetarians so I think Peter Luger is a no go but hopefully I can do some convincing.

Also this
is amazing/hilarious. I hang out in Ossington/Queen West in Toronto a lot which is the exact same thing. Queen West not as much as it once was.

I'd would rather stay downtown in tribeca/soho/west village than in midtown right around MSG. It's only like 15 minutes by cab or subway from tribeca to MSG. It would probably take the same amount of time to get to MSG from tribeca as it would from a midtown east location such as the plaza hotel. Maybe if you are a first time to nyc tourist, then staying uptown or in midtown would be preferable due to proximity to major tourist locations such as central park, times square, etc. But if you are coming for the weekend and you want to have a good time, I'd much rather just travel the 10-15 minutes to MSG and stay downtown where the action is.

btw, the penthouse at the soho grand is really sick. a friend of mine booked a night there and it has a giant terrace with amazing views, but I think its like 4K a night. As for reasonably priced luxury hotel rooms in nyc with a private terrace, I think the pickings are quite slim. I think some rooms in the mercer hotel and the gansevoort have small terraces, almost like juliet balconies. Definitely not the type where you can chill out and relax, more like small ledges barely large enough for two people to stand. But those rooms may fall within your budget.

the omakase at sasabune was like 140/person iirc w/o drinks. i dont think its a set price neccesarily and its just the cumulative prices of everything they serve u a la carte. u would prob be able to tell them ur gf only wants 3 courses or something like that i am guessing.

havent done omakase at kanoyama usually just order whatever and w/o watching what i am spending and ordering what i want id guess its about 50-60 per person.

i did the omakase at yasuda but cant remember how much it was.

sry for the delay in the post, been busy moving back into nyc.

i have no idea. from googling around a bit it seems like it may be though.

I will be in New York the same time (through the 31st) taking my daughter to college.

We are going to Le Bernardin for dinner on Friday night - reports are that it is formal, but not stuffy. Apparently, if you still don't like fish after going here, then you *really* don't like fish! TR should follow, comparing it to my recollection of L20 (excellent Chicago seafood restaurant) in the spring.

Our airfare and hotel are essentially free (vouchers/hotel points) so we are going to make up for that in food - in addition to Le Bernardin, we're also planning on going to db Bistro Moderne, Grand Sichuan and the Gotham Bar & Grill.

I haven't been to any NYC pizza places but have been researching it and the king of NYC pizza seems to be Di Fara in Brooklyn. We probably will be going to Keste; it's more Naples-style than traditional NY, but it looks very good and the location is great for us.

Shake shack is on the list as well for lunch.

TKTS sounds like a good idea but the times I have seen it, the lines have been ridiculously long and not worth the wait. We got tickets through broadwayoffers.com, though just search for "discount tickets broadway" and you'll find a number of discount vendors. As for shows, "Next To Normal" is great and if you're a Hitchcock fan (or even if not), "The 39 Steps" (off-Broadway) is hilarious.

I really don't understand the love for Shake Shack. Small serves, over-priced and over-greasy junk food. Maybe I just had a bad run there, but I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to go there.

I'm surprised that this has only been mentioned once, but this is 100% true. Arthur Ave. is the nuts. I recommend Full Moon Pizza.

Also, if you're going to go the Italian route, I'd recommend the St Anthony's Street fair in Little Italy.

I know other people have mentioned the Cloisters, but all of Fort Tryon Park is pretty beautiful, as are the Bronx Botanical Gardens.

I just saw Steve Cohen's chamber magic show at the Waldorf. Would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys magic. Tickets are $75 for an hour and a half show, which takes place in a suite in the towers. The location and dress code (jackets for men) make it feel like you're in another time. Cohen is a great entertainer and very skilled at sleight of hand.

http://www.chambermagic.com/

if you stray two blocks in any direction from arthur ave in the bronx you are liable to get robbed or shot imo. just fyi. the street itself is pretty safe but i used to work in a school a couple blocks over and a guy got capped out there in broad daylight my first week on the job.

Where's the best place to meet people around the age of 23? Bars or otherwise, preferably not a bar, like a hangout spot? I've been living in Chelsea which is def not the best area to meet people around 23 let alone any kind of female. Maybe hang out more towards NYU now that college is beginning?

At 3PM on a Saturday, our wait was 1 hour just to order the food! WTF?

The burgers were pretty tasty and well cooked, the fries were decent but nothing out of the ordinary. The shakes were disappointing, however - certainly not bad but not even as good as shakes from a "top tier" fast food place like In'n'Out. I thought the prices were reasonable and was quite stuffed by a double-burger, fries and half of a shake. There was certainly nothing to justify an hour+ wait.

I *might* eat there again if there was no line - no shake, though - but given the apparently continuous line, this turned out to be a check-list visit likely not to be repeated.

lower east side, east village, williamsburg . . .

Paws off NYU girls - at least the freshmen.

Cliff's notes of Le Bernardin: L20 in Chicago is a truly great seafood restaurant, one of the few seafood places in America that gets mentioned in the same breath as Le Bernardin. We truly enjoyed our meal there in February. However, both my daughter and I agreed that Le Bernardin is vastly superior to L20 in *every* respect as far as the food itself goes, and in 2+2 parlance, it's not even close. We had tasting menus at both restaurants, and of the dozen+ dishes at L20, perhaps 2 or 3 at the most would have not been out of place at Le Bernardin, and they would have been at the bottom of the ranking. Looking at it the other way, the worst (a relative term only) dish we had at Le Bernardin would have been one of the stars - maybe *the* star - at L20. Again, L20 is a great restaurant, there is just that wide of a gulf between it and Le Bernardin.

Service was top-notch at both (and no, we did not find Le Bernardin to be stuffy in the least) so is the one area where L20 competed evenly.

I can nit-pick just a bit - for example, the meat from the end of the lobster claw doesn't inherently have great texture, and while it looked beautiful on the plate probably should have been left off. The bread was nothing special at all. Other than that, though . . .

Le Bernardin was also well beyond our recent - and truly wonderful - dinner at Manresa. Manresa deserves its 2 stars, but just simply didn't compare with Le Bernardin, which equally deserves its 3 star ranking.


Keste was wonderful and I'll be back again. I had the Marinara pizza, outstanding sauce and delicious crust - nowhere for either of these components to hide, nor did they need to. The very center of the pie got slightly soggy, but that's not a big deal. There was a fair amount of Italian being spoken between the waiters and several customers, so it gets the authenticity vote as well.

I've been, and +100000000 to this suggestion. Incredibly intimate setting as well.

turtle bay.. all those bars on the east side.. there are like no chicks older than 25 in all the bars afterwork

Any tips if I'm flying solo? I'm. New to nyc and don't have any friends yet lol

you moved for work or school?

going to be grabbing a reservation at le bernardin for the beggining of october for 4 or 6. any tips on best way to go? i see you can do it over the phone or in person? any insider info i should know?

I used OpenTable for mine; I think they open reservations 30 days in advance, so if you jump on in a few days you should be OK, especially for a Monday/Wednesday dinner.

As for insider info, be sure to ask for the "Egg". It is a small extra dessert that does not appear on the menu (kind of an amuse for the desserts). Sometimes the restaurant runs out, so ask for it when they call you to confirm.

I would also recommend the chef's tasting menu as a good way to sample the cuisine. The wine pairing worked very well, though in honesty I would have to say that the wines did not elevate the food so much as fit it. Dinner for two this way will top $800 . . . and is worth it.

neither, my dad works at a hotel there so i get to stay free and grind poker/go out and do whatever I want essentially. I'm 23

Dunston Checks In ITT.

i'm probably going to skip the wine pairings. i'm going with my brother sister and mother. will all four of us have to get the same tasting menu if we want to go that route? or can one of us get the chef's tasting, a couple get the regular tasting menu etc... etc...