midtown east
-
Restaurant Review: Metrazur (Restaurant Week Winter 2010)
Charlie Palmer’s Métrazur was an obvious Restaurant Week choice for my boyfriend and me: we’ve passed by it a million times inside Grand Central, we’re interested in Palmer’s restaurants in general, and I wanted the Sichuan spiced pork tenderloin on the Restaurant Week menu. As far as atmosphere goes, not much beats Métrazur. Located on Grand Central’s East Balcony, it overlooks all of the chaos of commuters rushing to their trains, but the immense space overhead captures all of the noise and leaves the restaurant cozy and quiet. It was definitely unlike any other restaurant’s decor. I made Kamran pose like this, just so you don’t think he often sits…
-
Restaurant Review: Boi Sandwich
I was just living my life one day, heading to pick up dinner at Boi to Go–a Vietnamese fast-food-type offshoot of the original Boi just a few blocks away from my boyfriend’s apartment in Midtown–when I saw that the location had closed early. Horrified that I might have to dine on another slice of tasteless pizza, I read the sign more closely and found that an even newer Boi had opened on 3rd Ave. between 44th and 45th. It meant backtracking three whole blocks, but I decided to give it a go. That was half a year ago, and I’m still loving it just as much as I did that…
-
Restaurant Review: Tao (Restaurant Week Summer 2009)
I’m sure I knew what Tao was all about by virtue of watching this past season of “Celebrity Apprentice” and seeing how many times Dennis Rodman recommended it, but the Restaurant Week menu somehow made that seem unimportant. It became important again, though, about five seconds after I walked in the door and heard the thumping club music and saw the crowds of yuppies and tourists holding drinks in the waiting area. After an uncomfortable fifteen-minute wait where we were bumped into multiple times despite leaving plenty of room around us for people to get by, my boyfriend and I were led upstairs, across a bridge, and to a booth…
-
Restaurant Review: Sakagura
The sign outside of Sakagura is a perfect representation of the restaurant as a whole: to use one of my favorite clichés, it’s like putting pearls on a pig. Maybe I’m squeamish, but I had my doubts about the place when I discovered I had to walk through an office building, past a security guard, and downstairs to the basement through a cinderblock hallway to get to the dining area. The restaurant was nicely decorated, with lots of bamboo and spot lighting, but I couldn’t help feeling that the dark look was less trendy and more meant to hide the fact that we were sitting in a dank back room.…
