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Showing posts with label elegant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label elegant. Show all posts

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Department store restaurants-blast from the past with a view

Like the author of this excellent review of NYC department store restaurants, I'm nostalgic for restuarants-within-stores, a holdover from my childhood when my mother would take me to Woolworth's for an open-face turkey sandwich, an experience I remembered both for its culinary pleasures, and the bonding experience with my mother while my older siblings were in school). That, trips to Boston Store as a pre-schooler, where (I am told) I was more than content with just a roll and butter, make me long for the experience of the department-store cafe.
Some of these restaurants sound like an excellent place to take mom and dad or nieces and nephews on a NYC visit, as many come with a view: Here are some that I'd like to explore:
1- Saks Fifth Avenue’s Cafe SFA, on the eighth floor. "The view alone is worth it: Rockefeller Center Promenade and rooftop gardens on one side, and along the other wall of windows, the neo-Gothic spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral across East 50th Street"
2- Le Train Bleu at Bloomingdale’s "appears to be suspended between the sixth and seventh floors."
3-"Bergdorf Goodman houses the two best department store restaurants in town. BG Restaurant is a seventh-floor stunner: robin’s-egg blue whisper chairs and chinoiserie wallpaper. The vista of Fifth Avenue and Central Park leaves me awestruck. Meals are served, but I opt for afternoon tea ($35). The sun is shining as I start on the finger sandwiches (smoked salmon, egg salad, turkey and dill). By the time I’ve finished a perfect scone with Devonshire cream and four petits fours, it is dusk, and Manhattan is ablaze."
4- "Bar III at the Bergdorf Goodman Men’s store. Different décor — dark wood and white marble — but the same food as its sister restaurant, and there’s never a wait."

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Neue Galerie -and its wonderful cafes

The Neue Galerie is an elegant, small, museum in a gorgeous building across and up from the Metropolitan Museum, at 86th and Fifth Avenue. The museum is devoted to early twentieth-century German and Austrian art and design. Exhibitions can be small but worth a visit, especially if you have a chance to stop at the cafe/ restaurants on the first floor: Cafe Sabarskay (Mon and Wed 9-6; Thurs-Sun 9-9; Tues. closed) and Cafe Fledermaus (Fri-Sun, 12-6). Here's a link to there Teutonic-centric menu. Even if you go just for coffee and breakfast, its a divine atmosphere; as close as you'll get to Vienna in NYC.

Hours and Admission:
Museum Hours

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday
11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
(closed Tuesday and Wednesday)

Admission
General $15
Students and seniors $10
FREE the First Friday 6-8 every month