Sneakeater

Agreed. But maybe what oakapple pointed out is right: maybe the food is consistent, whilst diners' proclivities are not. ← I have little doubt that that's what's happening. It didn't strike me as the type of place that would be inconsistent. I was just reacting to what I perceived (apparently incorrectly) as one excuse offered (by someone other than the restaurant).

If Corton can't be excellent with PL temporarily absent, then it's a failed restaurant.

It's gotten MUCH MUCH MUCH better.

To me the only thing that matters is that the mee goreng at Rhong Tiam are (to me, never having knowingly had them anywhere else) very good. I think it's not true that Vong established JGV as an innovator. I think the style of the cooking at Lafayette and especially JoJo, favoring emulsions over more traditional kinds of sauces, was the innovation that made JGV famous, and which remains at the root of his more serious cuisine. Certainly the food at Jean Georges is more a continuation of that style than of the outright fusion of Vong.

As someone who is completely ignorant of the origin of the dish, I can tell you that Rhong Tiam's Mee goreng noodles aren't self-evidently inferior, when you eat them, the way that, say, the "American" dishes are at Grand Sichuan.

Rhong Tiam chef/owner Andy Yang is from Bangkok.

What I meant is, I think Rhong Tiam is definitely worth a visit if you're in Manhattan and want Thai food. It's very good. I go there. But as a "destination" place, much less someplace to visit when you're on a vacation to NYC, I don't think so.

It's completely different. Bread Bar is more trad Indian streetish food. Tabla is Indian fusion, which in this case translates into standard-grade Restaurant Food with Indian flavor elements. Some people like it a lot.

Just to be clear, on Rhong Tiam, I said it was the best of the MANHATTAN Thais. That's the best of a pretty sorry bunch. OTOH, Sripraphai in Woodside, Queens is one of the great restaurants of New York and is well worth the short subway ride if you're interested in superlative Thai food. Vong is a hollow shell of a restaurant. Shang is, well, disappointing. You can do MUCH better in New York. (Including, as kathryn notes, the Momofukus, which really ARE among the best restaurants in town.)

I wouldn't recommend ANY of those restaurants to someone visiting from out of town.

I did the ordering, but I don't remember, either. (Lotsa mileage that night.) But I think Rhong Tiam is by far the best Manhattan Thai I've ever had.

Score!

The difference between going somewhere with friends or an SO on your birthday and enduring a horribly awkward summer associate lunch?

Noooooooooooooooo. I WISH I were there.

I wouldn't dissuade anyone from eating at Oceana myself.

Sethro, as a big fan of the last place you worked (and in particular your work there), I'd draw a distinction between places that once were very crowded and are now feeling a pinch, and places that were floundering to begin with or never established themselves.

Oddly, I drink that one (Zirbenz) at home all the time.

Corton = much more traditional French.

But the problem here is that this patron's mobility problems weren't apparent, and the restaurant wasn't apprised of them. As far as Corton was concerned, this was a case of "all who ask." (Also, Corton isn't, and doesn't aspire to be, a "5-star restaurant." It charges something like half of what per se does. You can't expect the same level of service. If you want to restrict yourself to "5-star"-type places, fine -- but you're going to pay a lot more than it costs to eat at Corton.)

You're right. But on a rainy night, that would result in the customers' hanging out in the restaurant for an hour or more waiting for the limousine to arrive.

I don't want to make a bigger thing of this than robyn is, but I just want to point out that hotels have staff members whose job it is to hail cabs for guests. Restaurants don't. If a restaurant sends a staff member out of the restaurant for a potentially lengthy period of time to hail a cab for a customer, that staff member is neglecting whatever it is he or she is SUPPOSED to be doing. This can be done on occasion, but it can't be done regularly, as a matter of course. It wouldn't be fair to the other diners that the staff member is SUPPOSED to be serving in some capacity. It independently occurred to me overnight that, as tan319 said above, if you are a visitor to New York with mobility problems, the way to address them is through your hotel, as that's the kind of thing hotels deal with. You can't expect individual service businesses you might patronize over the course of a day -- restaurants, department stores, theaters -- to be able to help you out with your transportation needs. I'll finally repeat that what restaurants do in places like Las Vegas is irrelevant, because cab services just work differently here. New York -- or at least Manhattan (it's different in the outer boroughs, where there aren't regularly cruising cabs so everybody has the number of a car service) -- may be unique in this respect. Of course, as docsconz said, it would have been nice if the Corton desk explained that.

As someone mentioned on Eater, you can't "call" cabs in New York. A restaurant can call a liveried car service if it has the phone number of one -- more expensive than a cab, and often it takes a long time for one to come if you don't schedule it in advance -- or it can send a staff member out onto the street to hail one (which is something no one, I think, would reasonably expect). But in New York, unlike in other cities, regular taxicab services don't have telephone numbers you can telephone to have a cab come. They don't work that way. You HAVE to hail them on the street. I've been eating in restaurants in New York for thirty some years and I've NEVER had a car called for me -- or even thought of it as a possiblity. (I HAVE done so in other cities.) It just doesn't work that way here (probably because, unlike in most other cities, there are so many cruising cabs here) (although the system breaks down when it's raining).

As will many's.

All day like 24 hours? Like after 1 AM? Like, HURRAY!!!!!!!!!!

Of course, the two people would have to get in first.