bigapple

At these longtime favorite restaurants, history, and good food are alive and well. If your waiting for the next big thing in New York dining, it'll be here in a New York minute. But if you want to experience some of the city's best known, most enduring restaurants, they're still around and as good as ever. Here are 10 GREAT ONES!

1. Grand Central Oyster Bar & Restaurant

This underground bunker of a restaurant, with its extraordinary arched tile work by Raphael Guastavino (who also did the Great Hall on Ellis Island as was mentioned in this thread), has set the standard for seafood houses in America since it opened in 1913. The vast dining room is in the belly of the beautifully restored Grand Central Terminal (you'll hear trains rumbling above you), and the room itself echoes with the sounds of people enjoying themselves to the hilt.
There is a meandering counter where you can order the full menu, a smaller counter where veteran cooks prepare the shellfish stews and pan roasts, and a seperate, wood paneled oyster bar where you can slurp up half a dozen bivalves with a glass of cold beer. If there's wild salmon or striped bass or fresh shrimp or crayfish to be found, the Oyster Bar will have them. Ditto the first bay scallops, the best spring shad and the fattest soft shell crabs.

2. Patsy's Italian Restaurant

Back in the 1980's when Italian food became as trendy as Armani suits and espresso machines, many of New Yorks old-fashioned Italian-American restaurants faded away as newer places began serving smoked salmon ravioli and $75 pastas with white truffles. But Patsy's has endured. The walls are covered with photos of legendary stage and screen stars who dined here. And its no secret that htis was Frank Sinatra's favorite joint.
Opened in 1944 by Pasquale "Patsy" Scognamillo, the restaurant has been in its current Theatre District location since 1954. In all the years since, there have been only THREE CHEFS; today its Patsy's grandson, Sal. He would never think of compromising the signature Neapolitan specialties served here in abundance, including chicken contadina with mushrooms, red peppers and potatoes; a thick veal chop Siciliano with reduction of garlic, rosemary and balsamic vinegar; and a dish rarely seen anymore, lobster fra diavolo, in a spicy marinara sauce served over linguine.

3. The Four Seasons

This is a unique and extraordinary place, as modern today as it was when it opened in Mies van der Rohe's stunning Seagram Building back in 1959. The interior, designed by Philip Johnson and William Pahlman, was unlike anything anyone had ever seen: exquisite polished French walnut walls, a bronze sculpture by Richard Lippold, shimmering metal bead curtains by Marie Nichols, a Picasso-painted theatre curtain and a babbling pool in the dning room.
The Four Seasons pioneered New American cuisine and promoted American wines when everyone else sniffed at them. The cooking, for decades now under chef Christian Albin, is a model of simplicity and sumptuousness, offering the finest foie gras and truffles, the crispiest duck and the greatest wines. And no matter if you cant get a table in the Grill Room for lunch; dinner in the Pool Room is every bit as memorable.

4. Delmonico's

The first true restaurant in America-built on Parisian models - was Demonico's, opened on William Street in 1831 by retired Swiss sea captain Giovanni Del Monico. With its separate tables, wine list and waiters, it attracted everyone from Charles Dickens to Mark Twain and Diamond Jim Brady. Moved to its present location on Beaver Street in 1837, it still occupies the same elegant terracotta-and-brick building. Today the restaurant is packed with Wall Streeters at lunch; in the evening, locals and out of towners come to marvel at the granduer of the place.

The current owners proud Italian - Croatian immigrants - maintain a menu fairly close to what it was in the Gilded Age. Signature dishes include lobster Newburg and the Delmonico Steak, cut from a boned short loin. Start with chef Angelo Panageas classic clams Casino or oysters Rockefeller. Finish off with the baked Alaska, which was made famous here.

5. Cafe Des Artistes

The splendid 1917 apartment building just off Central Park West called the Hotel des Artistes has always counted artists and musicians as its tenants. Isadora Duncan, Norman Rockwell and Noel Coward slept here, and its been home to Cade des Artistes from the start. Today the restaurant is equally famous for its celebrity-studded clientele and for the risque wal murals of 36 naked wood nymphs painted by famed illustrator Howard Chandler Christy.

Since 1975 George and Jenifer Lang have run the cafe with the same spirits it has always evoked, and they have made sure that all the great bistro dishes are still served with flair. Excellent pates and terrines, silky gravlax, shellfish on ice and perfect Dover sole are reliably on hand. So are a good number of George Langs Hungarian favorites, including a decadently rich chocolate Ilona torte from his mothers recipe. The Sunday brunch is a legendary meal, too. To come here year after year and find the atmosphere buzzing with celebrity is to be a part of New York history at its liveliest.

6. Keens Steakhouse

Back at the turn of the 20th century Keens was a restaurant where tycoons and actors, authors and pols went for huge portions of mutten chops and platters of oysters. Albert Keen, manager of the theatrical Lambs Club, opened the restaurant in 1885, and it became the destination in New York City's then trendy West 30's. Its rooms, with leaded windows and ceilings festooned with more than 50,000 clay pipes belonging to customers like Babe Ruth, Will Rogers, Albert Einstein, George M. Cohan, Douglas MacArthur, and Buffalo Bill Cody, are literally museums of Gotham memorabilia, including playbills and fine 19th century political artwork. The Bull Moose Room is dedicated to former NYC police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt.

These days you're more likely to see sports figures from nearby Madison Square Garden at Keens, but its solid American cooking - lamb chops, crab cakes, Maine lobster paired with filet mignon - is as good as ever. The restaurant is known for its series of whisky tastings, and yes, the mutton chops are still on the menu.

7. Barbetta Restaurant

The oldest family Italian restaurant in New York is also one of the most beautiful. Barbetta, opened in 1906 by Sebastiano Maioglio and stil run by his daughter Laura, has museum quality private dining rooms and an outdoor patio with cherub - topped fountain and lavish greenery that is one the most sought after spaces in the city during the warm summer months.

Its menu is also a testament to enduring luxury, one that forgoes the cliches in favor of refined Piedmontese dishes you'd be hard put to find outside of Turin: a "quails nest" if fried leeks served with fonduta, made with melted fontina, often lavished with white truffles, a luxury Barbetta introduced New York; bagna cauda, a "hot bath" of anchovy scented olive oil in which you dip vegtables; beed braised in Barolo wine.

8. La Grenouille

When Charles and Gisele Masson opened La Grenouille in 1962, its red banquettes, white jacketed waiters and stunning displays of flowers epitomized the luxe life of New Yorks genteel society - and not a few fashionistas, who for decades affectionately referred to it as "the Frog Pond".

Almost all its competitors in the French haute cuisine league have closed, but La Grenouille, now run by the Massons' son Charles, is more radiant than ever, with a menu of old favorites.

Thus, you may feast on a warm leek tartlet, the glorious cheese souffle, garlicky frogs' legs and quenelles of pike, or be delighted with chef Mathew Tropeano's seasonal dishses such as grilled quail with rosemary, braised duck with acacia honey, and truffle and champignon risotto. La Grenouille has never been more glamorous, and at $40 for lunch, its never been a better bargain either.

9. Peter Luger Steak House

Even its toughest competitors on the Manhattan side of the East River would admit that no one serves a better porterhouse that Peter Luger. But a table at the restaurant, which is located in the Williamsberg section of Brooklyn, is very tough to come by, the beer hall decor is uninspiring, the waiters are not exactly loquacious, and the wine list tends to be as dull as the Swiss Flag (sorry to all you Swiss pple ).

So what does Luger have that has kept it in business since 1887, and in 2005 earned a Michelin star? Its that porterhouse, sliced for two or three or more, its juices flowing onto a heated, tilted plate. Depth of flavor like this only comes from the Forman family's careful selection of the finest prime, dry aged beef. One bite and you'll taste just how much better a steak can be, which makes a trek to Luger a requirement for any confirmed carnivore.

10. '21 Club'

Ever since 1930, when '21' opened as a speakeasy, everyone has been through its big brass doors. Mayor Jimmy Walker held soirees with showgirls in the secret wine cellar. Humphrey Bogart, Orsen Welles, and Elizabeth Taylor were regulars, and Richard Nixon stored his wine here. When the directors of the movie Wall Street wanted an iconic image of new york power, they turned to '21'.

The upstairs party rooms are museums of fine graphic art and Remington sculptures, and the wine cellar itself, hidden behind a 2 and a half ton cement wall, still opens at the click of an invincible lock jiggles with a long wire. Walk past the storage bins and you enter one of the most beautiful private dining rooms in any American restaurant.

PaullyInNYC

Big, wow ..... thanks a lot for the post ... this is a great list of New York City Classic restaurants. I agree with you on the whole list. Thanks!! Have you eaten at all 10 of these places??

bigapple

Yes, I have eaten at all these places at least once. To get the best out of it, I suggest doing more research on it and call ahead to save a reservation. Some seating assignments are better then others as to maximize your dining experience. As far as food goes, all places are delicious just ask your waiter for advice on how certain meats are cooked and whatnot.

PaullyInNYC

Big ... thanks again! I think Im gonna make an attempt to try all these places at least once and i will get back to you on this. I have only been to Peter Lugers Steak House and it was excellent and surprisingly not too expensive.

CityGuy

I went out with a couple buddies for steak. We normally hit up the standards (Luger, Wolfgang's, Sparks, Strip House) all with their merits. Last night we decided to branch out. I had heard some good reports about Keen's so we made a reservation and went.

The room as fine and the service was acceptable (which is about all I would expect from a steakhouse), but the food was horrible - it was actually embarassing I thought for the price. We started with a crab dip, tomato and onion, and shrimp cocktail. The shrimp was fine although they are about 60% of the size you would get at one of the other steakhouses. The tomato and onion was pathetic. It was 5 small pieces of tomato and one tiny piece of onion. We actually had to ask for additional onion. The final straw was the crab dip. It was relatively tasteless, but the kicker was that they served it with Triscuits - yes, Triscuits. I cannot believe that we were served Triscuits when paying pretty close to $100 per person. The steak was mediocre at best. We had a porterhouse for 3 that lacked pretty much any hint of taste.

For the amount of money and calories that it will cost you at Keen's, do it right and go to Luger, Wolfgangs or Sparks.