Yesterday's Special: Good, Cheap Dining

You can always fit the facts to make the story. But fact is, plenty of affordable and decent restaurants still exist in Manhattan; even if you're not a white female correspondent for the New York Times, you're quite likely to find these places if you just look around more carefully. However, Chomper is willing to accept this analysis as semi-valid: The analysis of prices did not try to measure Greek diners, corner Chinese restaurants or chicken spots, no matter how sublime their wings. There remain many satisfying and inexpensive restaurants in what is arguably the nation's greatest food city - restaurants filled with patrons who are not seeking a memorable dining experience each and every night that they disdain their stoves.
But the high-quality bistros, trattorias and American comfort-food outposts, where diners flocked for a good meal, quite possibly served on a tablecloth, have greatly increased their prices, or moved outside Manhattan. The new hotbeds of affordable innovative cuisine are increasingly in places like Park Slope and Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn, or Astoria in Queens, having been pushed out by higher rents in Greenwich Village and Chelsea.
Well, in fairness, here is more of the article:
Yesterday's Special: Good, Cheap Dining By JENNIFER STEINHAUER and JO CRAVEN McGINTY There was a restaurant in Greenwich Village called Le Zoo, and it was good, and it was cheap, and now, like so many others of its kind, it is gone. It was not the sort of place that drew tourists clutching their Zagats, but it swelled each night with young hipsters and people from the neighborhood, who sipped red wine at the bar and ate $6.50 trout salad and $13 salmon at the crammed-together tables, and yes, smoked. But last year a new restaurant, the Spotted Pig, arose in Le Zoo's spot on West 11th Street, and it quickly became a destination for patrons with deeper pockets and expense accounts. Pub classics like sautéed veal kidneys are $18, and desserts are $6, not $4. The average bottle of wine is $30. Restaurants like Le Zoo - small, with a decent and inexpensive wine list, a memorable special, a total bill for two of $50 - used to be easy to recognize, the high-quality neighborhood places that were one of New York's pleasures. But now, in Manhattan, they are increasingly becoming a memory. In interviews, several restaurateurs confirmed what many New York diners have long suspected: it is becoming impossible to serve innovative and high-quality food at reasonable prices in Manhattan. Melissa O'Donnell, formerly one of the chefs at Le Zoo and now the owner of Salt in SoHo - where the entrées are 30 percent higher than at Le Zoo - said one more rent increase could be the end of her restaurant. "I'm from Manhattan, my client base is here, I have been working in downtown Manhattan since I went to cooking school," she said. "This is my home. But I think my type of place here is going to be a thing of the past."(NYT)

Tags:   cheap, comfort food, diner, dining, greek, le zoo, zagat

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Posted on 6/28/2005 ( Permanent Link )
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