The girl I'm taking out likes seafood and esca looks like formal/date type of place so I'll check it out. Thanks guys for the help. If you have any other recommendations I would appreciate it!

Make sure to try as much of the crudo at Esca as you can. It's what they're known for and it's simply excellent. The crudo tasting flight is a great way to start a meal.

Mittens speaks the truth

ate at Keens the other night thanks to this suggestion. had a solid burger in the bar room.

any other specific suggestions for this neighborhood/the bolded?

Go back to Keens and get the hash. So good!

Franzinator,
As a tourist staying in that area is great as it will give you a lot of accessibility to the things you want to see. They're great restaurants in every neighborhood, it really depends on how much traveling you want to do out of that area.

Need to think about it - a lot of them are bars & small restaurants that you kind of find when walking down the street (if you know what I mean).

Five Napkin Burger is pretty good, and a little hole in the wall called Island Burgers & Shakes is also really good. Eatery has good comfort food, but seriously, take a stroll from 43rd - 52nd and you'll find something you like.

I really like Pam Real Thai on 49th, but I'm loathe to recommend it because apparently Yelp hates it.


...but I'm a huge Thai snob, and while it wasn't ambitious, I remember it being incredibly tasty.

Esca (that we were just talking about) is right there too.

Esca was pretty good and as well as the muscial. Thanks for the recommendations guys, I'll definitely come for more next time.

Finally got to Momofuku Ko last night. Had high expectations going in and probably beat them. I posted my recollection of the menu in the High End Dining thread.

Vouch on Veselka for late night eats, and Ginger Man for Midtown East bar happy hour. Used to wind up at Veselka a ton when I first moved to Manhattan with co-workers after late nites.

Anyone have any hotel recommendations for around $400 a night?

Preferably around Greenwich, Soho or lower east.

You might want to try The Bowery Hotel, which pretty much sits at the intersection of those neighborhoods. However it's likely to be closer to $500.

bowery hotel is great for the price.

The Thompson LES is also really nice and a little cheaper than bowery hotel and only three or four blocks further south-east

Cool. I haven't been back since I was there a couple of months after it opened. A friend had a 2nd meal there about a year later and reported that it was almost the same, so as good as it was it didn't seem like there was any point to going back. Your menu only overlaps with mine on the egg and frozen foie gras, which I'm sure will never leave the menu, although I had fluke as well in a different form (poppy seed-buttermilk sauce). Someday I'll allocate the 3 hours to have lunch there.

Thanks for the suggestions.
I noticed this as I was looking at the Bowery's location. We were originally looking at the Smyth in TriBeca so this is a pretty good alternative.

I've had multiple friends stay there who have only had good things to say. I've also been in a room and its very clean/modern. Also the terrace bar is really nice in the summer although probably irrelevant considering weather at the moment unless they have some serious outdoor heating.

I've never been inside bowery hotel except the downstairs lounge area but it is a slightly better location

Went to Market Table yesterday in the Village (Carmine by 7th ave). They call it "Seasonal American", which was a perfect description - all kind of fall-inspired foods and it had the farm-fresh vibe. Food was excellent.

Market Table

Went there a couple of weeks ago myself. Solid food and a pretty cool space.

The Sanctuary Hotel on 47th near 6th Ave is an utterly gorgeous place

Is there a NY meet up thread like for the Washington DC one?

If there are any 2p2'ers around the Manhattan area who'd like to meet up for drinks at a decent bar/sports lounge etc, pm me or let me know here. I've moved here recently but I'm always down to meet up with fellow poker players around the area and find some new places to hit up.

My gf and I were lucky enough to get a reservation Friday night at Jean-Georges ABC Kitchen (abckitchennyc.com). So we met up with reno expat for dinner before grabbing yet another 2p2er (myrmidon7328) and heading to Caroline's to see Steve Rannazzisi (of FX's The League fame). ABC Kitchen uses as much organic, locally-sourced food as possible. The meats, veggies, even the dairy is all from local farms. It's a neat proof of concept: high end restaurant, James Beard award winner, uses all locally sourced and organic ingredients and keeps it (NYC-)affordable. Anyhow, quick dinner review:

Drinks: I tried the Peak Organic Winter Session Ale (draft) and followed it up with the Southampton Double White (bottle). I thought both were very good, with a slight (personal) edge to the Peak, because I find lemony notes somewhat off-putting in a witbier (though I recognize that some may love the lemon, and this is just my preference, nothing wrong with the beer). YMMV. GF had the Sancerre, which I tasted, and would highly recommend. Reno had a bourbon and cider combo, which he seemed to enjoy as well.

Apps: We shared the crab toast and the diver scallops. The diver scallops were raw and sliced thin, served with lime, chili, and pistachio. The lime was strong, and this came out almost feeling like a ceviche. For $16, I was expecting more I guess than basically one scallop sliced in 7 slices, but the lime-chili combo there was really good. The crab toast was fantastic. Thick-sliced (sourdough, I believe) toast served with lump crabmeat and a lemon-garlic aioli. This is absolutely something I will try to reproduce. It was delicious.

Entrees: Reno got the snapper, served with herbs, chilies, and spinach. I tasted this, and the fish was cooked perfectly. In fact, everything we got was cooked perfectly. The dill really came through in this dish, so if you're not a dill fan, you definitely want to steer clear. Otherwise I thought it was a very nice dish, but I am biased toward snapper. I had the roast suckling pig with bacon marmalade. I'm going to say that again. Bacon. Marmalade. This was delicious. It was like a little brick of pork (apparently they roast the pig whole, then carve it up and make this little brick o' pork) topped with some super crispy skin, topped with bacon marmalade, served with braised turnips. The pork was nice and sweet and smoky. My only complaint was that -- as someone who cooks a lot at home -- I didn't feel like this brought much to the table that I couldn't do at home. On the flip side, these type of meals are always inspirational -- I'll for sure be trying to concoct my own bacon marmalade now. And as usual, my gf got the tastiest dish of the evening: fried chicken with collard greens and hot sauce butter. Yes, hot sauce butter. This was a giant breast of chicken, lightly fried in what seemed like panko (by the way, the skin was still on the chicken breast under the panko). It was basically perfect fried chicken. The hot sauce butter got into the collard greens, which gave them that nice little kick that collards ought to have. Just incredible; I highly recommend it.

Dessert: Gluttons that we are, and knowing that we had a 32 block trek up to Caroline's to work off all the calories anyway () we ordered the doughnut platter (incidentally, it's near impossible to not order these after they parade you by the case that plays home to the doughnuts on the way to your table) and the salted caramel ice cream sundae. The doughnuts were light and fluffy, not too sweet. The dough was almost a little bready. There was a strawberry-iced one, a chocolate-iced one, and a jelly-filled sugar-coated one. The jelly was great, and then the chocolate-iced one (which tasted like a really nice Boston cream with no cream -- man I just kept waiting for the cream in the middle, but no dice Boston creams are my favorite) was good, and the strawberry-iced ones were fine but not exciting. If you are able, I'd pass on the doughnuts. They are good, but as a whole not exciting. However, you would be wildly remiss to not try the sundae. Three scoops of salted caramel ice cream (which is really good), peanuts, kettle corn, dark chocolate sauce, whipped cream. This is easily one of the best ice cream dishes I've ever had.

Service was very good. One of the bartenders was a little less than friendly (we arrived a little early and had a drink before dinner), but the others were very nice. Our waitress was good; she was very friendly and stayed on top of things but was not oppressive at all. The water fillers were -- shall we say -- ambitious, especially since the water glasses were small. Our water didn't get below half full for basically the entire meal. But that's better that than sitting there looking around for water for half the meal.

All in all, it was a really nice meal, and I would to recommend it to anyone.

ABC Kitchen is my favorite place in the city in the tier just below the 3-star Michelin places. I was really lucky to stumble upon it and went three times in their first month (and now can't even get a reservation).

Nice TR Wyman. Been meaning to go there for months and haven't made it yet. I heard they buy a lot of their ingredients from the Union Square Farmer's Market.

Union Square farmers was pretty good, I was there in the summer. I recall a lot of prepared foods, though, I wouldn't think a restaurant could go there with a list and buy what they need. Maybe they buy stuff and then build a menu around it, which would be pretty amazing.