Going Back to Eat in Midtown, Where the Main Dish Is New York, New York

Start spreading the news: This often-maligned neighborhood is pulsing again with a variety, energy and deep history that are the city’s essence.

Once, when a friend who lives in a small town had an overnight layover at Kennedy International Airport, I came up with what I thought was a cool idea: I would pick him up and drive 20 minutes or so to a waterfront bar in the Rockaways for cold beer. After hemming and hawing, he admitted that he had been hoping for a martini at the King Cole Bar in Midtown Manhattan. He had just one night, and he wanted to see the city.

There are many New Yorks, but Midtown is the place to go when you want to eat and drink in New York, New York. Tourists understand this better than locals, who love to complain about Midtown. One of their complaints used to be that it was full of tourists. Now it’s half-full. People who worked there before the age of Zoom meetings tended to see it as a necessary evil to be endured only until the end of the business day. In their eyes, Midtown was business and downtown was pleasure.

But Midtown has pleasures of its own, no less real for being widely overlooked. This may be easier to see now that the area is finally getting some relief from a pandemic pummeling that hit its restaurants harder and longer than those in just about any other part of town. When the outdoor dining program turned most of the city into a street party in the summer of 2020, Midtown was apocalyptically quiet. A few landmarks, like the “21” Club and Shun Lee Palace, are still dark. The Grand Central Oyster Bar didn’t reopen for good until last month. The Grill, the Lobster Club and Empellón waited until this month.