For A Taste Of New York, Try A Sip Of Alfresco
In New York, the best places to sit outdoors, sip a glass of chilled pinot grigio and gaze at a stunning or provocative sight are not necessarily sidewalk cafes.
The most seductive places are recessed from the street, far away from car exhaust and the rush of hot, sweaty bodies.
A few of these oases of serenity happen to be sidewalk cafes in secluded spots, but others are tucked away in skyscrapers or in public buildings like museums. The city has dozens of contenders, but the seven that follow fulfill the criteria for alfresco sipping with charm. They are open to the public, and they offer places to sit and drink, and views that mesmerize, while being shaded from the sun. There are no demands that expensive three-course meals be purchased, and best, no requirements for coats and ties.
In downtown Manhattan, there is a garden surrounded by a bright yellow fence where flowers don’t bloom in profusion, but pert young women do. It is the Bowery Bar, at East Fourth Street and the Bowery.
The Bowery Bar is to the young downtown beau monde (actor, waiter, model sorts) what Nell’s was in the 1980s and Max’s Kansas City was in the 70s. It has cachet.
It is where the hopeful might glimpse Calvin and Kelly Klein, Kate Moss and Johnny Depp. The Bowery Bar is an archeological site-to-be, a place to study celebrities in action or people yearning for a frisson of celebrity.
Make a reservation for the garden, order a drink and watch. (The yellow fence is a shield against the street.)
For those who prefer nature over artifice, art over fashion, there is the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Since 1987, the sculpture garden has been open seasonally; this year it is open through Oct. 27.
What the garden lacks - shade trees (there is only a vine-covered pergola) and a unity of design (half the floor is concrete, the other half wood) - is offset by spectacular views of Central Park to the north, west and south. Dragonflies skim over the treetops.
To get to the garden, one must go through the museum, which has a suggested fee of $8. But once in the garden, one can linger without having to buy even a soda ($2).
For the aesthete who drinks, there is also Sette Moma, the second-floor restaurant overlooking the sculpture garden at the Museum of Modern Art. Reservations are suggested, but free passes to Sette Moma are given out at the information desk, with no requirement to pay the museum’s admission fee.
The terrace has 26 tables. Some have molded-wood chairs in Arne Jacobsen’s 1951 design, while others have metal wire chairs in Harry Bertoia’s 1952 design.
The service, along with the food and drink (a glass of wine starts at $5) is quintessentially Italian. Warm. Gracious. When the waiter recommended the risotto ($9), he was right.
The Italian spirit is alive at Bar Pitti, 268 Avenue of the Americas (Bleecker Street), one of the few sidewalk cafes in Manhattan that is set so far back from the street, leaving 15 feet of sidewalk clear, that cars become distant and fumes faint.
The bar, where a glass of wine costs $4.50, attracts a downtown crowd that likes to stay up late and pretend it is in a Roman piazza sheltered by a deep awning, enveloped by sweet service, where no one hurries anyone.
For those who like to drink and people-watch in a park, lost among trees without a car in sight, there is the Bryant Park Cafe. Directly behind the New York Public Library, the cafe, with its bamboo and rattan chairs, encourages both leisurely drinking (wine starts at $5.50 a glass) and reading.
Those who prefer glass and steel to grass and butterflies, or who savor the harsh urban imagery of Ridley Scott’s film “Blade Runner,” where the synthetic obliterates the natural, go to the bar on the 23d floor of the Peninsula Hotel, at Fifth Avenue and 55th Street. Aside from the sky, nothing in the view speaks of nature. Even the grass underfoot is fake. It’s plastic.
The prices of the drinks match the elevation of the view. A beer costs $7.50, a martini $10.50, a glass of champagne $12.50. But where else can you imagine yourself to be a Ridley Scott replicant, whizzing past tops of skyscrapers New York style?
To plunge to earth, to be near water, try the terrace of the River Cafe, at 1 Water Street in Brooklyn. On a summer night, the entrance path has its own allure. Trees are strung with tiny white lights and rambling roses climb the walls along the walk, nestling against borders of pink petunias and cascading ivy.
On the terrace, where there are only six tables, people talk, gaze at the Manhattan skyline and especially listen to the East River.
The few tables on the terrace are first come, first served. The terrace normally opens at 5 p.m. except on Sunday, when it opens at noon, and it is available only when there are no private parties. Still, lucky are the people who happen onto it. Service is slow, but so is the sipping of the wine ($5 a glass) and the nibbling of the oysters (six for $16.)