Th eRussian Tea Room is NOT worth it.

Have a look at opentable.com - which will list those places that are serving on Christmas day - for a place that really is special for the $.

That said, many places are closed - and many of the ones that are open will have set seatings. if you want a place with a more varied menu - do check that out.

Ah... I remember the Russian Tea Room back then... not the same now. Alas... the same with the Plaza.

Check out the Sea Grill in Rockefeller Center. You might kill two birds with one stone.. have lunch and see the tree. I haven't been there.... but friends have and enjoyed it very much.
(I live in NYC... so, of course, don't know the tourist hot spots -

Thanks--I am now convinced abou the Russian Tea Room. It was both Open Table and fond memories of the one of times past that made me think of it. Will keep trying---there is a French restaurant in the Sofitel Hotel which sounds good and a steakhouse on the west side of Midtown. I am ignorant of all of them. My close friend In NYC does the Chinese food/movie thing, but Chinese food is forbidden to my diet for health reasons.

I suspect 2nd Avenue Deli or Katz's will be open, but that may be too casual for you. It's certainly not "special" in the same way that the Sea Grill would be. But you may have relatively few options except hotel and touristy restaurants since most places are closed on Christmas.

I'm not sure what your dietary restrictions are, but the best places to go for Chinese food are upscale places like Shun Lee, which aren't the same as take-out Chinese and are quite special, especially on Christmas.

I just thought about another possibility. There's a kosher steakhouse called Le Marais. That might be open.

If you can eat Chinese at all Shun Lee is a good choice - excellent food and a nice atmosphere.

Sea Grille is also excellent - but prices are sky high - and you have to reserve far in advance to get a table with a view of the skaters at the Rock Center rink.

Wish I could be more help but we never eat out at Christmas,

This is where we now are with Christmas meals on the 20th anniversary of having met. We have noon reservations at Jo-Jo's on the Upper East Side, the plan being to walk around 5th avenue windows and maybe try to get a glimpse of the tree in Rockefeller Center. We then will have dinner at Nice-Matin on the Upper West Side near where we are staying and where we have eaten before--more casual, less expensive, and as I remember, food quite good. We would welcome comments.

Nougatine at Jean Georges is good. Casual. The main restaurant would be better, but they may not be open on the 25th.



For dinner, if you do not mind leaving the area, you might try:

Ai Fiori, upscale Italian with southern French influence. Excellent food, especially pastas, whicih would be a must if you dine there. Large scale hotel dining room.

http://www.aifiorinyc.com/



MAS Farmhouse is wonderful, romantic and "special." Not inexpensive, but good value. Both they, and their more casual, and very handsome, sibling, MAS Grillade, have tables for Christmas dinner. Both serve "farm to table" food, with emphasis on Greenmarket selections.




http://www.masfarmhouse.com/home.html

Thanks--in fact I looked at Nougatine (less $$$ than Jean Georges which is open but $200 per person. I chose Jojo, also a Jean Georges restaurant because it looked like it might be prettier. However, I have not seen either. I'll look at MAS Farmhouse and MAS Grillade

JoJo is an excellent choice. The food is wonderful and the setting in a period townhouse would be perfect for Christmas Day.

And Eks..thanks for link to MAS. We'll put it on our list for next summer.

I just had Thanksgiving dinner at JoJo. It's a nice setting, but I have to say that it was a total zoo in a series of extraordinarily crowded rooms, and we ended up having to wait 45 minutes for our table, not an ideal Thanksgiving memory.

The real problem is that the restaurant overbooked itself horrendously and then never caught up. Further, there's no real place to wait. The bar area can accommodate about 6 people comfortably, and there were 15 or 20 people there at any given moment. Lots of people were outside, and the crowds had magnified by the time we were done at 7:30. So it was a mixed bag. The food, however, was great, and I felt that the prices were reasonable for what we got.

Service for dinner was good, but it was rushed. For example, we hadn't come close to finishing off our wine by the end of dinner because there were literally no lulls in service ... we waited at most 1 minute between courses), so I asked if dessert could be slowed down. It wasn't. So while the kitchen was a real machine, the restaurant proved far too cramped and overbooked to deal with that many diners.

So the long and short of it is that I love JoJo but can't recommend it without a great deal of hesitation for a holiday meal.

This is the problem that many restaurants have on holidays - they book solid for every seating - then someone is a little late, or the staff isn't used to handling so many tables turning so quickly - and while the food may be good the experience can suffer.

I think it's better to dine at a place that doesn't have fixed seatings - but on holidays they can be very hard to find.

We always go out for Thanksgiving, and this was a unique experience. I've eat at Artisanal, Bar Americain, Maialino, and other places in recent years and never had this experience, and I've never had to wait more than 2 or 3 minutes to be seated, and that only because there were alot of crowds.

JoJo just got greedy and tried to book far too many people too close together in a relatively small restaurant. They didn't allow for the fact that a table of 8 takes almost twice as long to serve as a table of 4. I chalk it up to bad management.

FYI: The seatings at JoJo weren't fixed. They take regular reservations.

crmstraf, it sounds like you've made other arrangements, but for future reference, a note about that restaurant in the Sofitel.
I've never eaten there but I work on that block and often cut through the Sofitel lobby - and the restaurant - as a shortcut to the next block.

The place is never crowded and always strikes me as rather depressing. I have no idea what the food is like but the place itself does not have any ambience or appeal. I would skip it just based on that, especially for a holiday.

Well if the seatings weren't fixed - then obviously they just got greedy. You can;t assume a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner will take the same time as a regular one.

JoJo is one of my favorite places. We've had Thanksgiving dinner there several times without any problems. Also love it for "ladies lunches." I hope Doug's experience was just a one time
aberration.

JoJo is one of my favorite places. We've had Thanksgiving dinner there several times without any problems. Also love it for "ladies lunches." I hope Doug's experience was just a one time
aberration.

Nougatine is quite lovely. We eat there often before Lincoln Center performances. I have never seen it overbooked and we eat there at busy times. Very good food and tables a good distance apart for NYC.

I'll add EE Grillhouse to the list - food is great and I know one of the E's
http://www.eegrillhouse.com/menus/christmas.html The Library at the Public Theater may not be open Can't figure out Bar Bolud

Nougatine has always left me cold. For Christmas Day I think Jo Jo would be a lot cozier.
Tho I"ve always been an old soul who likes cozy -
(Sorry for the double posts.)

Thanks to all. Perhaps I'll see if I can shift our noon reservation to 11:30 to lessen the risk of the problem.

The prix fixe lunch at Nougatine is one of the great food values in the City.

I think there's much less chance that any restaurant will be backed up at noon. Service typically starts only a little before that. I think you'd be safe with the noon reservation anywhere you go, so I don't see why you should move it up (even at JoJo) unless you really want to eat that early.

Golemtoo, I hear you about the Nougatine lunch, but that won't be offered on Christmas day.

I think you'll find very few people eating as early as noon. Two or 3 pm is more typical - or even an early dinner.

I definitely wouldn;t start eating a big lunch at 11:30 in the AM - and think you will find many places not open yet.

Thanks, NY traveler and Doug Stallings. My husband is Italian and when we travel we almost always make lunch the main meal of our day, usually around 1:00 pm. I made our reservation at noon because of concerns about quality of service (before I read these posts) on a holiday where places can overbook themselves. And yes even noon is earlier than I would like a big meal, especially with time change, but I'm leaning towards the noon time rather than 1 or 1:30 because of fears of a bottlenek.
As always, this forum is really helpful.

I wouldn't book earlier than you'd like simply to avoid a bottleneck. It's easy enough to book at 1 if you want to be sure you're seated at 1:30. But as others have pointed out, the delays grow over the course of the afternoon, with the greater desire in the U.S. (and NYC in particular) to eat later rather than earlier. If you want to push the time out by an hour, I wouldn't hesitate to do that. And I'd also add that Christmas out is just not the same big deal as Thanksgiving in Manhattan, where most people don't have an oven big enough for a turkey.

I've never eaten out on Christmas in my entire life but eat out on Thanksgiving regularly (though granted I've never traveled anywhere but to family on Christmas).

I've been left cold by both JoJo and Nougatine. Park Avenue Winter and David Burke Townhouse have become brunch favorites and both would be very festive. Both have availability at 1 pm on Xmas day. I'm curious how and where you met on Xmas day. Happy anniversary!

I made my first trip to Italy in 1992, loved the country, decided to learn more of the language. One day my tutor told me of an Italian friend who wanted a conversation partner. We liked each other a lot, when she returned to Italy, she left me another friend as a successor, who also returned to Italy. 3 days before Christmas, I had lunch with Daniela's (partner #1) husband. He said, my friend Marco has just arrived, he doesn't know anyone and his English is not good; woud you like to continue the tradition? I said sure, then out of my mouth came, "if he doesn't know anyone what is he doing for Christmas?" Ale shrugged. I said, "he is welcome to come with me (later thinking FOOL). I'm having Christmas lunch with a typical Berkeley family, 3 races, 2 languages, everyone divorced and remarried to each other and cordial, Christmas dinner with a gay couple in San Francisco. After an awkward phone call (language barrier), we arranged to meet on Christmas morning. The first thing we did was exchange small gifts, a box from him and a guidebook and dictionary of politically correct English (impt in Berkeley) from me, gifts which we now give to each other every year. We were married in Italy nine months later. We liked each other more than we planned.

I'll check the restaurants over the weekend though I may now be having search fatigue.