NEW YORK CITY (BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX) — You gotta love New York. As soon as the financial bubble burst and the suits started packing their lunches, a host of restaurants fought back by offering affordable prix-fixe menus and perks to keep their tables full during tough times.
On top of Restaurant Week -- which begins next Sunday and features lunches for $24.07 and dinners for $35 at participating eateries through July 31 -- dining stimulus deals make eating out in the Big Apple more enticing than it's been in ages.
And that's no exaggeration. After living here for 15 years and perfecting the art of dining frugally in pricey restaurants, I moved away in 1995 when even a martini and steak frites at the bar in the chic Soho bistro Balthazar got too expensive. But back in town last month, I found I could afford to eat out well and fell in love with the Big Apple all over again.
The meal deals were everywhere. There I was, walking along tony Central Park South, when I saw "Business Bailout Lunch" emblazoned on a banner above the Helmsley Park Lane Hotel. Of course, I had to stop and check it out. The special menu served in the hotel's elegant, second-floor restaurant includes two choices from a list of salads, soups, sandwiches and desserts, plus a nonalcoholic beverage, for $14, which isn't much more than a similar meal would cost at your local Chili's.
Big Apple restaurant stimulus deals come in a variety of packages: slashed corkage fees making it more attractive to bring your own wine, specially priced dessert and after-dinner drink combinations, reduced-price tasting-size entrees, extended hours for pre-theater meals and classic prix-fixe menus at even some of the city's most fabled dining places.
"Many restaurants are offering prix-fixe menus on their own, not in conjunction with Restaurant Week. They allow people to eat in places that are normally beyond their budget," said Andrew Rigie, director of operations for the New York City chapter of the New York State Restaurant Assn.
I'd have ordered the Helmsley's bailout special then and there, but I was on my way to meet a friend for lunch at Jean-Georges, this year's recipient of the James Beard Foundation's Outstanding Restaurant Award. As much a physicist as a chef, Jean-Georges Vongerichten learned French cooking basics from his Alsatian grandmother, studied spices in Southeast Asia, went into the culinary laboratory and then introduced America to his signature foaming sauces.
