As far as "where you can get a reservation", OpenTable should give you a lot of help in that area.
Yes! What Becks said. I use OpenTable for everything.
Those trendy places in the meatpacking area are always impressive. Pastis, Spice Market, etc.
My sister told me she is thinking about Nougatine for her law school graduation dinner (yay my sister!) She has good taste in fancy restaurants so it is probably really good. It is on Columbus Circle so not too far from your target area. One of my favorite places, which I think might be appropriate to your query, is La Luncheonette at 10th Ave. and 18th Street. The name to the contrary it is quite a fancy restaurant. I've only been there a couple of times (like usually when somebody else was paying) but I don't recall having trouble making a reservation. Particularly on a Tuesday, you should be ok.
Those trendy places in the meatpacking area are always impressive. Pastis, Spice Market, etc.
You're going to make me cry, Joe.
MY honey's mother took us to a ridiculously posh French restaurant around the E30s: "La Grenouille." Very good food.
I live in AZ, so I have no suggestions. But if you don't get your answer at Unfogged, try posting your question on this board:
http://www.chowhound.com/boards/18
trendy places in the meatpacking area
Hogs 'n Heifers?
Hogs 'n Heifers is pretty good, but for my money The Hog Pit is the better barbecue in that hood.
9 -- Johnny Knoxville's appearance in that link is classic something-or-other.
I hear great things about Tabla on 25th and Madison. In the same area, 11 Madison recently redid its menu, I think, and is more traditional fancy-pants food.
6: I've seen moody TV shows about artists, and I'm certain that you're not supposed to go to trendy places. Certainly, you're not supposed to like them.
Sorry, but my New York restaurant knowledge is over six years old and, therefore, completely useless to your query.
Let me see if I understand: you're "too busy" with work to comment around here, yet you somehow have time to take your mother out for a birthday dinner?
Life's all about priorities, LB. You've made yours perfectly clear.
Dave's 11 Madison Park suggestion is good, if you can get in on short notice. Their new chef has been getting good reviews and the decor is traditional, not one of those crazy trendy places (which could be good for your mom). I was there for a fancy business meeting thing a while back and my coworker summed it up best when he said "You know it's gonna be a great meal when they serve your steak with a butter knife."
Tabla is good. That reminds me; Tamarind is really great, if she's ok with Indian.
I don't go to the trendy restaurants, Tim! I just walk by and sneer.
over six years old
B-but what about the empire state building wedding proposal? Surely you went out to dinner after?
16: Tears saved, crisis of faith averted.
"You know it's gonna be a great meal when they serve your steak with a butter knife."
...So you'll be able to spread butter on your steak?
...So you'll be able to spread butter on your steak?
Oh God that sounds good.
I got nothing in your target area, LB. Sorry.
15: Just because LB is the way she is, let's not assume that her mother isn't "with it". Maybe it's just Liz.
http://www.bluehillnyc.com/main.html is usually delicious
Washington Sq. North (Western Corner)
Further to 3: here is a brief review of La Luncheonette that I wrote 7 years ago, the first time I ate there, and a bunch of responses thereto.
... Um, I mean "9 years ago". The arithmetic, it's never been my strong suite.
...So you'll be able to spread butter on your steak?
Oh God that sounds good.
That's why, despite living in a hotbed of local steakhouses, I still unrepentedly love Ruth's Chris (sorry LB, no help here). How could you not love a place that cooks and serves your steak in a sizzling hot shallow pool of butter and herbs?
19 - No, because it's so tender that's all you need to cut it.
All this talk about steak makes me remember that I have some leftover chelo kebab ("meat candy") in the fridge. MMmmmmmmmm.
You should go either to Gordon Ramsey's new restaurant or Applewood.
Asian cuisines aren't a big favorite
Racist.
Wait, isn't w-lfs-n's sister employed as Something Important in some NYC restaurant? LB should go there.
But seriously, go to Craftsteak. Mmm... steak...
My sister is employed at Applewood (and was formerly at Blue Hill, and before that at Le Bernadin) and her fiancé at Gordon Ramsay's new thing. Hence my TOTALLY UNBIASED recommendations.
moody TV shows about artists
Jody isn't an artist. He writes musicals.
32 - I went to Craftbar last week when a friend was visiting. Meh.
Except! I had an appetizer that you can totally make at home that is teh yum: take a baguette, slice it lengthwise, put some blue cheese (and, if you want, a few peanuts) on it and broil until melted. When finished, drizzle honey on top. Yuuuuum.
The papers in London have been full of gleefully bad reviews of Gordon Ramsay's new place. I would avoid on principle anywhere run by someone on television.
"run by someone on television" s/b "recommended by w-lfs-n"
I had an early (6:30) dinner at Joel Robuchon (in the Four Seasons) the other week and the bar---where they serve the same menu as the dining room---seemed about half full. Its totally delicious if a bit pricey. You might try that.
I also think its reasonably easy to get a reservation at Jo Jo on short notice. It's Jean-Georges first restaurant so classic French with some Asian fusion (but much more restrained than Jean-Georges and more more French than Vong). It's wonderful food, unstuffy services, in the low-sixties on the east side, but perhaps less than newish.
I think Tabla and Eleven Madison are great choices.
Joel Robuchon has a restaurant in NYC?! I own one of his cookbooks.
Try the official NYC restaurant of Unfogged: Chock Full O'Nuts
In the NYC area that establishment has renamed itself Chock Café.
I went to Nougatine a week ago and was unimpressed. The service was fine--overattentive actually; they confiscate your bread plate when you finish your bread. But the food, while attractively presented, wasn't that great. It seemed they were trying to be creative and it didn't quite work.
I knew I was in trouble when my French husband said of his foie gras appetizer, with some carmelized hard shell on top of it, "I wish they had made it like you do at home." It was downhill from there, with the sauces not really enhancing the meat and the side dishes just off. The warm chocolate cake was fine, but again, I could do that at home, and $12 worth would feed the whole family.
However, it is an easy place to get a last-minute reservation, and the Margaux by the glass was excellent.
Thanks Shamhat -- I will notify my little sister. (Did I mention yay little sister!)
Normally I'd be congratulatory, but given the circumstances I worry on her behalf.
the circumstances
Which ones? You mean that she is going to be a lawyer?
Daniel Humm's food at Eleven Madison is supposed to be fantastic, though I understand you have to get one of the tasting menus in order not to leave hungry.
Not mentioned yet, but also worth your consideration, is Cru, on Fifth Avenue at 9th. It may be known more for its wine list (lists, actually: one phone-book size volume for red and one for white, with a lot of well-priced older vintages), but the food is great, too. The chef was a Food & Wine best new chef a couple of years ago. Italian-oriented, with a bit of Spanish and French and some tastefully deployed modernist touches.
Oh, the Modern (at MoMA) is really nice, with very good food and excellent cocktails.
28: With apologies to your sister, Applewood is grotesquely overrated.
Artisinal? Blue Smoke?
A lot of the fancier restaurants are do-able on short notice if you're willing to sit at the bar.
36 - You know Craftbar and Craft are not the same place as Craftsteak, right? (although they have the same owner.)
I'm a Peter Luger loyalist, but I found Craftsteak excellent. We had a raw seafood platter, including a whole lobster, that would have been a good dinner all by itself, followed by a melt-in-your-mouth Kobe beef sampler before our actual steaks, which were richly flavorful, juicy, and perfectly textured. Plus, the wine list is long and well-chosen.
We had to force ourselves to eat dessert (which they brought out for free even though we had said we'd pass on it), because, you know, kids are starving in Africa.
The lobster was cooked, but served cold. I was thinking about that after I wrote the post. What I meant was that there were raw oysters, clams, etc. plus other cold, but cooked items. I should've just said "seafood platter".
There's a great seafood restaurant in Chelsea called Mare (around W23rd), but it might not be as fancy as you're looking for. It has half-price oysters until 7pm on weeknights...
Okay, that makes sense. I was thinking, I'm usually game for anything, but...
On the other hand, if it were live lobster putting up a heroic fight, that might be worth a try.
A friend of mine says that in Japan they eat raw shrimp, which is interesting because shrimp are bottom feeders who eat anything that sinks to the ocean floor.
I heard in Korea, they eat dog.
In Shediac, New Brunswick, the self-proclaimed "lobster capital of the world," someone told me that the abundance of lobster was directly related to the abundance of sewage effluent in the bay. Undeterred, I went to a local all-you-can-eat lobster joint and had five. The memory almost makes me weep.
Emerson, isn't there a Chinese dish that involves dropping live shrimp into rice wine and then eating them after the alcohol kills them and they float up to the surface?
Thank you, everyone -- La Luncheonett won the crucial "let me make a reservation on short notice" test, although 11 Madison sounded really good.
Why not wait till you actually see w-lfs-n to throw piss in his (really, his sister's) face?
60 -- excellent, let me know how you guys like La Luncheonett[e].
56: A friend of mine says that in Japan they eat raw shrimp
I ate one at a sushi restaurant one time where the chef pulled it live out of the tank, sliced it up, and served it to me with the tail still twitching. Mmm....
63: There's a couple places in LA where they serve it straight-up live.
And then there's the live octopus tentacles.
62: It was pleasant. The food wasn't terribly interesting, but nice and competent. And a French-accented waitress described what the US has done in Iraq as "worse than Hitler" -- somehow political conversations with my mother in them tend to go that way. She is the Angry Left.
You mean "werse dan it-lehr," I think.