This Is Where I Ate Before I Left Manhattan
Ryan Sutton's guide to the best Times Square and Rockefeller Center restaurants is also a farewell to Midtown
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A Farewell to Hell’s Kitchen, for Now
Well, I moved to Brooklyn.
It’s not a huge deal, all things considered. Anyone who lives in New York knows that switching apartments isn’t so much a life event as it is a regular inconvenience. You move when the landlord hikes your rent. When you decide to live with your significant other…and when you break up with them a few months later.
Or maybe, you move when your rent-stabilized apartment gets transitioned to a free market rate. I know something about that one.
I’ve moved six times since I finished grad school in the aughts. I know that a Magic Eraser is the key to removing bike scuff marks from a foyer. I know that Brillo pads, baking soda, and dish soap will make a greasy oven spotless (gotta get that security deposit back). Hiring movers is always the right thing to do, but I know that friends who help you throw out an old West Elm couch deserve the Order of Lenin. And a tin of caviar. Or something like that.
Yet still. I forgot how much this process rattles you. Moving isn’t as easy as trading down from Masa to Shuko to save a few bucks on sushi.
My fingers still hurt from the steel wool.
I’m lucky I found a good deal in Park Slope. But I’m sad to leave Hell’s Kitchen, the neighborhood I’ve called home for nine years. There’s something exhausting about our city at times, our metropolis that’s now witnessing a generational affordability crisis.
New York is a place where so many of us have to plan our lives just one year at a time, just one lease at a time.
But enough of that for now. Today, I want to write about something more exciting, if slightly bittersweet. I’m going to tell you about the last meals I had in Midtown…as a resident of Midtown.
I snacked on naturally leavened pizza fried in hot oil. I ate crisp uni temaki at an affordable new handroll spot. I chomped my way through one of my favorite pork buns a new Western Chinese restaurant. And I devoured short rib tacos enrobed in bone marrow an hour before curtain call. I ate very well.
No, most of those spots aren’t actually in my old stomping grounds. They’re closer to Times Square, Rockefeller Center, and Bryant Park. And that’s kind of the point. I’ll be back to Hell’s Kitchen, to keep visiting some of the city’s top Thai, Japanese, and Latin restaurants. To keep working out of the bakery I love. To cycle along the Hudson while admiring all the cruise ships at port.
But I won’t be back as much to the places just outside of my old neighborhood — the places I’d drop by out of convenience or chance. The places I’d visit while walking home from MoMA. The places I’d happen upon while Citibiking through the Theatre District. If I had to pick a metaphor, I’d say this reality reminds me of those cool people you hung out with when you were still together with your ex. You lose those contacts in a breakup. Maybe that’s for the best.
And I suppose it’s time for me to have a new neighborhood to explore. This will be good. Right?
These breakup sentiments, I reckon, are appropriate for Times Square and Rockefeller Center. These aren’t really places that any New Yorker voluntarily seeks out on a daily basis. Still, tourists flock here. Maybe you’ll find yourself here too, when you get tickets to “Hadestown” (so good!). And quite a few folks work in Times Square. I should know; I’ll be one of them again, when I return for my seventh year of teaching at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. I can’t wait.
Sure, Times Square has scores of brand-name tourist traps. But there are lots of hidden gems too. And I’ll miss them. Until school starts in the fall. Until I move back to Hell’s Kitchen. Until more rent-stabilized units actually stay rent-stabilized.
Until all those journalism jobs come back…
16 Places to Eat Near Times Square and Rock Center
Behind the paywall you’ll find:
Mari.ne, reviewed. Your new essential handroll spot
Why you should be eating more fried pizza — near Times Square
The spectacular short rib-bone marrow tacos near the Wicked Theatre
The case for sticky, crispy pork buns at Bites of Xi’an
The joy of $6 al pastor at Los Tacos
My favorite spicy soup in Times Square, at Lagos
A few great steaks near Rockefeller Center and Times Square
What spots to avoid in this tourist-y area
Mari.ne | Affordably luxe hand rolls
One of the best parts of a fancy omakase is letting the chef make you a crisp hand roll — maybe dripping with toro or caviar — near the meal’s end. Problem is, not all of us can enjoy a $400 sushi tasting every second Sunday of the month.
Enter Mari.ne, which serves a stunner of a $17 uni temaki.