Nathan

we're on the same wavelength. "hipster" in NY these days means something a bit different than what you are describing. cross out Williamsburg, Pianos and Max Fish. you will be happy with any of the others.

Happy Ending used to be fun. hmm...bars in NY can be difficult to recommend because there is such a weekday/weekend divide in atmosphere. most bars have split personalities. I'd recommend Employees Only because it manages to both have good cocktails and yet be somewhat racous and sceney. also consider the bar at the Spotted Pig, Pravda, upstairs at the Stanton Social, the bars at Thor and Schiller's....the outdoor bars at the Delancy and at 230 5th (although the later crowds are really annoying). HiFi has an excellent jukebox. depending upon how you are defining "hipster"...you might find Williamsburg to be up your alley. ditto for Pianos and Max Fish. Barossa, the Sunburnt Cow and couple other bars on Avenue C might also be of interest...

the above are great for excellent cocktails and conversation. they are also very sedate. so, I really need more on what exactly you're looking for.

I stopped in here for lunch/brunch on Saturday. With the exception of the still overpriced mediocre Bloody Mary's, the pricing is now in keeping with the quality and nature of the food. the burger is excellent. the fried calamari as good as this dish can get...simply but lightly fried fresh calamari with an excellent tomato sauce robust with caramelized onions. a nifty oyster shooter. now why they couldn't have priced it appropriately from the get-go instead of trying to fleece people is unclear to me...

interesting thread that I wasn't aware of before: thoughts from someone who does a lot of photography (albeit not food photography) and has invested way too much in a DSLR and a couple "L" lenses: some of these points appear to have been made a couple years ago but are worth repeating: 1. Megapixels, schmegapixels. As a general rule of thumb, you will get higher quality pictures from a P&S made several years ago than today. why? because as a general rule of thumb, any P&S with more than 4-5 megapixels is a piece of crap. in a digital camera, the vast majority of the cost relates to the sensor itself, a flawless piece of silicon. to get the vastly larger amount of pixels onto a piece of silicon that consumers are demanding, manufacturers are simply reducing the size of each pixel...because increasing the size of the sensor would be too expensive. (this is why the 12 megapixel sensor on the Canon 5D or the 16.7 megapixel sensor on the Canon 1DMKIIS is so expensive -- those sensors are huge pieces of silicon with huge pixels.) what this means is that each pixel is acquiring much lower light than before...degrading quality. so, you're better off with an older P&S. 2. if you do find a P&S that outputs in RAW..that will be really nifty for food photography. one of the great advantages of RAW is that it allows you to forget about white balance when shooting. when you process the RAW photos in a RAW converter later, you will simply adjust the white balance then. 3. when shooting in low light in a restaurant, personally, I'm offended when people use flash..I find it annoying. and it takes bad pictures. pump the ISO as high as it will go on your camera. on a P&S the high-ISO settings will be noisy (heck, on DSLRs this is still a major advantage that Canon has over Nikon -- superior high-ISO performance (of course, Nikon has other advantages over Canon))...but that can be fixed later with Noise Ninja or Photoshop CS2 (if you have either of those or something similar). 4. don't rely on Best Buy or Circuit City for advice. those kids are clueless. their job is to push megapixels, megapixels, megapixels. P.S. a nifty free photo-editing program that is useful for P&S shots is Picasa. www.picasa.com

hmmm...not that it says much (since she likes everything) but Andrea Strong has very good things to say here: http://thestrongbuzz.com/buzz/buzz_view_buzz.php apparently the "prairie butter" (bone marrow) is served free at the bar from 4-6

looking at the menu, this place is going to be either really interesting or really bad. http://www.lonesomedovenyc.com/default.htm

ate here last night. highly recommend the aromatic beef.

you know what I find interesting? that chicken leg appetizer was completely out of place with the other dishes. it was perfectly cooked, well-seasoned and in a terrific, indeed, velvety and unctuous, sauce. and, unlike the other dishes, it has apparently been on the menu all summer. if they developed a set stable of 6-8 dishes of that quality for each season, and then vary a couple other dishes daily...instead of the entire menu....it would be worth every penny.

Pam Real and Wondee Siam (although nowhere near as good as Sri and presumably Zabb) are ten times better than Sea or Planet. Sea and Planet are exactly identical in terms of food quality to the Sea and Spice and Peep pseudo-Thai restaurants in the city. The only difference is that they are larger and have more elaborate decor. yeah, I have Brooklyn friends who rave about them too. on the other hand, they're not foodies or actually into Thai.

I've been to Sea and Planet (as well as the Manhattan and Brooklyn Heights equivalents) and they don't even belong in the same paragraph as Sri. Sweetened, Americanized "thai"

its the second time ever. I once found a Jean Georges (the eponymous restaurant) menu in pdf form on Amazon before eating there. but yeah, google is a wonderful thing. unfortunately, I can't find a sample menu for the new Tasting Room with prices

not to keep whipping a dead capybara, but here is the menu for Perry Street: http://www.zagat.com/verticals/Menu.aspx?V...7&HID=500002003 with the exception of the lobster and caviar...Perry Street is no more expensive than the Tasting Room.

urk...that didn't last long. I remember they had an ambitious Italian wine list...and something like a 100 by the glass....

unless the prices have changed dramatically at Giorgione, no way are you meeting your price target. another thought -- Inoteca? You might be able to pull it off at della Rovere or Bread Tribeca...

hmm...you could show up at Otto at 7:30, put in for a table and then start drinking at those bar-tables...you'd probably get your table within a half hour. honestly, that might be your best bet. I suppose you could try Apizz or the like as well.

call it a corollary to the Brooklyn theory (that any halfway decent Manhattan-esque restaurant in Brooklyn with slightly below-Manhattan prices automatically gets overpraised by locals): any halfway decent ethnic restaurant on the UES automatically is overpraised merely for existing (especially if it delivers). SG is seriously not in the same league as Pho Bang, New Pasteur or Nha Trang (to me the fundamental item a Vietnamese restaurant should get right is its pho....Saigon Grill doesn't manage that)...(I'm excluding "fancier" places like Bao 111)

I think Bruni did us a favor here (unlike, say, the Platt review)...I doubt this place was showing up on the oenophile radar before.

Pam Real and Wondee Siam aren't in the same league. I've heard that Zabb is though.

Well, that explains why their culinary aesthetic appears to be: let's take some really great vegetables (whatever we got in today) and cook those while throwing a simple a fish fillet into a pan and searing it. then we put them together on a plate and charge $32 for it. nice work if you can get it.

This post exemplifies what may be the real problem. Virtually none of the dishes daisy17 mentions were on the menu last week (I would have ordered that goat or either of the shoulders in a heartbeat if they were)...I question whether a kitchen that small can really put out that many constantly changing dishes and have them work.

agreed...and from the sound of it, L'Atelier Vegas would be easier to come down on the positive side for...simply by virtue of more reasonable prices.

Rich, I realize that you have some sort of axe to grind with the Times (and I think it's about something other than Bruni) but a positive review from Bruni (heck, anything other than a no-star rating) would have helped them immensely (though their location may still have killed them anyway)

d____, I really liked it. the location was a drag though...and to be fair to Bruni, it didn't get coverage anywhere... 5 posts on egullet total.

yup. also, an entree portion of the cappellini with ossetra caviar is $86. still I had a very good meal there.