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. Continue reading →