Both services are fine and very popular here in NYC - but since I live here, I have no idea about how they work vis a vis a hotel!

My partner and I order in dinner a lot; most often, we just call the restaurant directly for delivery. Just be aware that time of day and distance for delivery will affect the amount of time it takes for the food to be delivered!

Of course, walking into a restaurant and ordering takeout - or ordering there for delivery - works well too.

// If you're staying in a part of town near one of the Whole Foods, their prepared foods make a very good option for takeaway.

there are certainly more and more interesting options than we can get in our small town!

This is one of the reasons I can never move out of NYC. We have the most diverse population - and thus the most diverse dining - of anywhere in the country!

Not to mention, we are SO spoiled with late hours and abundant delivery. It's so frustrating to visit my family elsewhere where delivery doesn't exist!

Bookmarking.

I use grubhub ALL the time here in San Francisco - Love the service and their customer service is great if there are any problems. I'd ask your hotel if guests use one or the other and if so, how it works. I'm sure you're not the first person to ask.

Some hotels don't allow deliveries up to rooms. Some do. The question here is about your hotel, not Seasmless Web. And a LOT of restaurants here don't participate in Seamless, though a lot do. But almost every restaurant will deliver, even fairly upscale ones.

You need to understand that these are service that partner with restaurants - those listed - and the restaurants are actually delivering the food. So what you get and how fast will depend on their proximity to your hotel and the restaurants own food. Also check them out on menupages.com to see what sort of reviews they have. (I don;t trust good reviews there - but DO trust bad ones - since I have discovered I expect more than most people settle for.)

And agree you need to make sure the hotel allows deliveries. (They can't stop you carrying in food yourself - but can ban delivery men (and prefer you order from their restaurant - if they have one.)

and it is true that most places do deliver - many couldn;t survive without the delivery business.

We live on a floor with 8 apartments and there are at least 2 or 3 dinner deliveries every night (including us many times).

Thanks very much for your replies

I was thinking that it was a delivery service, but it makes more sense that it is just an 'ordering' service. I like the idea of being able to do the ordering online - it makes it easier to pace the decision making with the kids...

That's a great idea to confirm with the hotel what there position is on getting deliveries. We're staying just over in Queen's at the Country Inn and Suites (could get a bigger room configuration to fit the family at a lower price than in Manhattan that also includes breakfast and wifi. Having visited NYC last summer as well and stayed in Chelsea, we are comfortable staying slightly off the beaten path - knowing that proximity to the subway is really the important location consideration!). They don't have a restaurant (aside from breakfast) so I imagine they wouldn't have a no delivery policy, but great suggestion to check...

ggreen - I hadn't thought of Whole Foods (a place I only really know from Food Network shows!) and didn't know they had prepared foods - I will map them out to see if there are any close to our end of the day before supper rough itineraries.

Another related question... how much would you normally tip a food delivery guy?

thanks

Being in Queens is going to limit who will deliver to you. Make sure the services you are considering will deliver in the neighborhood where you are staying and who wide the selection is.

VCanada, your hotel decision-making sounds like a true New Yorker. Being between two subway stations serving different lines will help a lot!

menupages.com is great - even has a partnership with seamless - except that they don't cover Queens! Try yelp.com instead for restaurant reviews, and finding spots in proximity to your hotel. Also, plug the hotel address into google maps, then do a "search nearby" for restaurants: google aggregates the reviews.

As for delivery, I'm not sure if you'll have any success getting a Manhattan restaurant to deliver across the river (if you were even thinking of that). I don't know the area near your hotel very well, but I'd say generally that any restaurants closer to the Court Square subway might be a better bet (and should certainly deliver to your location). The Queensboro Plaza station is a busy commuting nexus, but I don't know that there are that many residents/workers there, whereas at Court Square, the Citicorp tower is there, as well as the MoMA-affiliated P.S. 1 art space, etc.
momaps1.org

To my knowledge, there aren't any Whole Foods in Queens. But my favorite one in Manhattan is at Union Square (N/R train access to your hotel - which is what I do in the opposite direction, with my groceries to Brooklyn!). The one with that caters most to visitors - i.e., has the most prepared foods compared to groceries - is on the lower level at the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle. The ones on the LES (Houston between Bowery & Christie) and Tribeca (near the WTC site and Battery Park City) are the newest and most comprehensive. The 7th Ave/Chelsea one will be the least useful for your needs.

A note of caution about WF: they don't call it "Whole Paycheck" for nothing! Very tasty, but don't let it all go to your head.

Another good place for (not inexpensive but good quality) prepared and other foods is the Amish Market. There are a few in the city; one I used to frequent is on East 45th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, which would be relatively convenient to your hotel on the 7 line (easternmost stop before Queens).
amishfinefood.com

Oh, and Grand Central is right there, too! Lots of takeaway options in the Dining Concourse; virtually all the shops and eateries in the station are outposts of NYC establishments. (My favorite coffee place in the Village is there on the main floor: Joe the Art of Coffee. Adjacent to it, a place from my neighborhood just opened the beer lover's equivalent at Beer Table. Junior's at the other end is justifiably famous for its cheesecake. On the dining concourse, you'll find the famous Pie Company; Two Boots Pizza (the two "boots" being Italy and Louisiana!); a number of other food counters; and the station's manned rest rooms.) The terminal is also home to the Grand Central Market.
www.grandcentralterminal.com

As for tipping, it depends a bit IMO on how far the delivery guy travels and how large the order is (how much he has to carry). In my outer borough neighborhood, we tip on average $3 for a meal for the 2 of us.

P.S. Looks like Beer Table is so new at Grand Central that they don't yet have it properly listed. A search of the site brings this up:
http://www.grandcentralterminal.com/go/fb/guide/store.cfm?StoreID=2137043367

Also, possibly way more important to mention with kids and in summer, the Dining Concourse includes a counter for the always-yummy Ciao Bella gelato!

thank you so much again for your replies

Yes one of the trade-offs that we factored in in deciding to stay in Queen's was the thought that there may be slightly fewer choices for things like this, but just doing some more online research there are still WAY more choices and options that we have at home! So I wasn't really expecting Manhattan restaurants to deliver - and found the 'will deliver to' feature in seamless and grubhub so that helps... thanks!

Also thanks for the tip that pretty much all restaurants will probably deliver - there were a couple that I had mapped out within reasonable distance that weren't on seamless, but sounds like it might be worth contacting if we like the sound of them!

ggreen - thanks for the tip about Court Square and Grand Central. I am also going to look into MOMA PS1!

The kinds of places I'm leaning towards (for delivery, takeout or even eat-in choices) are good deli sandwiches, and any ethnic groups 'grilled meat with some kind of bread product' - especially Latin American inc Mexican. That short list is based on things I think are going to definitely be better in New York than in small town Canada and should have enough options to please all 4 of us (who have varying degrees of openness to new food things!)

Thanks again for the tips - they are helping immensely as I continue to research and map out options!

Your options for the Country Inn & Suites are going to be limited in terms of food. There just aren't many options there. But there are some fast-food places around Queens Plaza where you can grab something quick as you get off the subway (and most of them do not deliver). But few other choices ... and few real restaurants. I'm sure you can get pizza. Just ask at the front desk, and they can probably give you the menus of all the places that deliver there. It will probably be a short list.

Hi - I work at Seamless and am happy to report to you that right now (noon on Friday), there are 52 Seamless restaurants that will deliver to your hotel. I've successfully ordered dinners to hotels via Seamless in other cities, just not NYC. If your hotel won't allow deliveries directly to your room, you can always add a special instruction on the checkout screen indicating "please leave order with front desk" and the front desk or concierge can have a porter run it up OR you can pick up the order from downstairs.

Side note: ordering from Seamless should be much less expensive than your hotel's room service and certainly offers a lot more options, so enjoy!

And have a great trip to NYC... your show schedule sounds terrific!

lk

p.s. you can also use our mobile apps to order (iPad, iPhone & Android) so you won't need to pay for internet access.