Dining & Wine



April 20, 2011, 2:02 pm

Hey, Mr. Critic: In Search of Fine Dining and Harbor Views

Annisa in Greenwich Village.Tom White for The New York Times Annisa in the West Village.

The digital carrier pigeon brought questions from married people this week, and from dutiful children and copy editors in search of a reunion meal. I did my best to answer them. You may of course send along your own questions about dining out in and around New York City to dinejournal@nytimes.com.

Q.

For our 10th wedding anniversary in May, I wanted a renewal of vows on a beach in Hawaii, but with things the way they are, my husband and I have decided on a night out in New York City instead. We were thinking either of dinner at Annisa or a New York Harbor dinner cruise, where the views and the atmosphere should be amazing, though I’m not sure about the food. We are not terribly sophisticated but do love good food, and I am looking for something suitable for the occasion. Can you help?

Sam Sifton is the restaurant critic of The Times.

A.

Those are two very different evenings you are describing. One would involve sipping Nicolas Feuillatte Premier Cru Champagne in a spare and elegant West Village dining room as servers place dishes of eggplant with two Turkish chilies and yogurt water before you. The other would put you in a floating catering hall with an astonishing view of the magical New York City skyline, where, at least in my experience, you would get sticky sweet wine, steam-table chicken and the faint blowback scent of diesel engines to lull you into queasiness.

Do the math and, honestly, it’s a tossup: Anita Lo’s cooking versus the Statue of Liberty against an inky black sky, so close you can touch her.

Hey, Mr. Critic!

Here is what I would do. Make a reservation at Annisa, making sure to let the reservationist know that you are celebrating your 10th wedding anniversary. The service industry works best when expectations are clear: You aren’t going there with a pal from the neighborhood, or that guy from the audit department you’ve been saying you’d eat with for months now. This is a special night.

Then go to the restaurant and eat your food and drink your wine and have some pecan and salted butterscotch beignets for dessert and kiss and walk out onto Barrow Street and stroll. Walk the streets of Manhattan with your spouse of 10 years for as long as it takes for your meal to settle and your expectations to begin to rise. Then hop a cab down to the Whitehall terminal, stride onto the Staten Island Ferry and take a round-trip cruise down the harbor to St. George and back, free as the air, right past the Statue of Liberty rising high in the night to enlighten the world. Have a hot dog from the snack bar if you’re still hungry. Take some pictures. Let the wind ruffle your hair. Marriage is a great institution.

Q.

I’m helping organize a reunion brunch for 23 copy editors, a task that is giving me agita. People’s budgets differ, and we’re looking for a lovely, delicious Manhattan brunch on a Sunday for no more than $35 (plus tax and tip), somewhere fairly quiet where we can reminisce about commas of the past and spend a little time together. Help!

A.

Copy editors are the great unsung heroes of American journalism. Their job is to ensure clarity in the writing of others. So they attack flabby prose. They rewire sentences. They ask questions. They teach grammar to idiot reporters who could not tell a dangling participle from the future subjunctive. (Q. Hey, what does a copy editor call Santa’s elves? A. Subordinate Clauses!) Often, they check facts even when fact-checking is not and never has been the job of a copy editor. They write headlines. And they improve the work of people who too often do not thank them, or thank them enough.

So they deserve a good brunch, though finding one in Manhattan for 23 people at under $35 a head is no picnic. It gives me agita too. But for a bleary Sunday midday filled with people recalling serial-comma debates, error-prone writers and the great semicolon genocide of 2002, I think one of the large and bustling Congee Village restaurants, either on Allen Street or the Bowery, might answer: Chinese food is a copy desk tradition, after all. There are large tables and private rooms at both restaurants. The food is excellent and affordable. And you’ll all have great fun with the menus. Rimshot, please!

Q.

My husband and I are escorting our mothers on their first trip to New York in May. (Yes, both of them at the same time. Yes, we may be crazy. Yes, we do intend to drink heavily.) We have tickets to a Broadway show and I’m stymied on where to take them for dinner beforehand. Could you help? Their palates extend to Asian and Indian food, but they aren’t exactly foodies. We have reservations at the Red Cat and Colicchio & Sons during the week. Also, a recommendation on where to take them for a cocktail post-theater would be grand. My mother has declared her intention to drink only Manhattans.

A.

I am not a proponent of dining before going to the theater, even with mothers in tow. I think you should have a late lunch of spring-greens ravioli with preserved lemon at Union Square Cafe, and then take nice naps at the hotel. At around 6, you can take them for a drink and some crackers to Sardi’s, the elegant old-school theater district watering hole and restaurant. This will get their blood-sugar level (and your blood-alcohol level) to the point where you can take them to the show. Afterward, you can head to another theater-district mainstay, Angus McIndoe on 44th Street, for an ace Manhattan or two and, if you’re hungry, the Vietnamese salad or all-day Irish breakfast.

Q.

My wife and I will be staying at the Michelangelo Hotel in Midtown for three nights. This is our 40th wedding anniversary, and even though we have already celebrated with a fairly elaborate vacation, we would still like to go “somewhere nice” for dinner. We have tickets for “The Book of Mormon” on Friday night but nothing else scheduled for the next two nights. Other than Le Bernardin (it is too over the top in price and ambience for me), can you suggest something else in the neighborhood? Not Italian since we already have a favorite in our hometown. My wife enjoys a French restaurant, but I sometimes find that the portions leave me looking for someplace to eat after dinner. Other than that and some issues with extremely spicy food we would be open to just about anything.

A.

You’ve got Bar Americain, Bobby Flay and Laurence Kretchmer’s steak-y joint, practically right across the street from you, and you could go there and leave totally unhungry, but I fear it might be a little loud for your purposes. Oceana, where the Livanos family puts out a very nice American seafood spread, is also near, and you could do very well for yourselves in one of its wide and comfortable booths: king crab legs and Champagne.

Finally, there is the Modern, in the Museum of Modern Art. The room and the service and the food seem almost perfectly designed for your purposes. Gabriel Kreuther is the chef: have his venison consommé to begin, followed by a small sturgeon and sauerkraut tart and a slow-roasted lobster tail. Just one meal among a lifetime of them, but one shared with your wife in New York City on the occasion of your 40th wedding anniversary. Walk back to the hotel slowly, holding hands, thinking about that.


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Diner’s Journal embraces news and opinion about recipes, wine, restaurants and other matters culinary. Contributors include Eric Asimov, Glenn Collins, Florence Fabricant, Nick Fox, Jeff Gordinier, Elaine Louie, Julia Moskin, Sam Sifton, Samantha Storey, Emily Weinstein, Pete Wells and others.

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