Manhatta is a new American restaurant on the 60th floor of the JP Morgan building from Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group.    It’s a fixed price menu of 3 or 4 courses.  They have  tons of people working there – who greet you when you enter the building and direct you to the dedicated elevator to take you directly up to it with a waiting area if you’re not ready.  Up top they greet you and usher you to the bar to wait for your table to get ready – a bit of a con I think.  You only can access the place if you have a dinner reservation, however the option is to come for a drink, snack and enjoy the view and then go somewhere else for dinner.  The dining room had the most windows for viewing but there didn’t seem to be any holding of people at the bar in that there was a constant stream of viewer wedging between the chairs to get to a window for a selfie.  Between the bar area and the dining room was a long open kitchen that did have counter seating but it was really noisy.  If you go be sure to request a window table – which mostly seemed to be for 2 with the 4 tops and larger ones in the center of the room.  The tables are bare and there were sound panels on the ceiling as well as carpet on the floor to keep the noise level acceptable in the dining space.  However as the evening went on it got harder and harder to hear what the servers were telling you about the food.  Lighting was mostly from the windows which gave us a spectacular view of the East River with its boats and surrounding buildings.  Service at dinner was average and so was the food, but the view is fun and worth going for.

Set-up

 

Food

We started at the bar with a manhatta, a cocktail named for the place which instead of being individually made is poured out of a batch bottle.  Way too sweet.

 

An amuse bouche was a smoked sturgeon tart with potatoes and everything bagel seasoning.  The tart shell was slightly stale and the bagel seasoning was lost to the dill and smoke overtones.

 

Foie Gras torchon was with Muscadelle grapes, Thai basil and sobacha.  The very smooth torchon was good with the grapes but almost dwarfed by them.  It was an interesting combo of two tasty ingredients that to me were better eaten separately.

 

Bread service was sliced dark sourdough bread and butter. The crisp crust was around a doughy interior filled with air pockets.  The butter was nicely softened but oddly sticky.

 

Glazed sweetbreads were with Morel mushrooms, arugula bearnaise and horseradish.  There were 2 different sauces on the plate and I’m not sure what all else was there.  The fresh morels were lovely but too many greens were layered on the one large sweetbread.  Good not great.

 

Lamb loin and rib were with fava bean pesto and almond and pecorino sauce.  Some whole fava beans were also on the plate in case you really needed a lot of fava beans.  The belly or rib meat was in a roll under those beans and much tastier than the slices of loin.

 

A palate cleanser or pre-desert was a sour sorbet on “crispy crumble” and topped with finger limes bits and zest,  The description was lacking but the taste was actually quite good.

 

Pistachio cake was with strawberries and creme fraiche chamomile ice cream.  The rolled cake had a hard layer of icing around the foam inside.  The pistachio dust was on top of the ice cream and I’m not sure what the cookie dotted thing was.  There were too many things on this plate and none of them very compelling.

 

Coconut mousse was with campfire caramel and smoked cacao nib ice cream.  This one had a hard piece of chocolate supporting little pieces of cake with dots of caramel and swirls of chocolate – in various levels of sweetness.  Parts of it were okay but I longed for another palate cleanser.  Again, too many things on the plate to try and combine.

 

A final treat was a lemon thyme macaron.  It was nasty.