Actually, I will add this, addressed to ga9497:

Try to avoid mid-priced restaurants whose governing theory is "fashion for less." For $100 per person, you should try to eat in restaurants that use fresh ingredients, prepared authentically, and have the owner in the kitchen.

There are hundreds and hundreds of restaurants in New York where the menu is about being a knock-off of a celebrity chef who charges a fortune for his or her creativity. Those "creative dishes" get all kinds of buzz in the New York press, and a hundred wannabees add "foam" or "crust" to their dishes. So you have all these mediocre restaurants with "creative touches" at $20 a plate.

Don't go to them!

Instead, pay your dollars for fresh food (harder to find in Manhattan than most people know) and a chef who knows that the best food "preparation" is just to begin with good food and leave it alone as much as possible.

Some of those chefs are Chinese, some are japanese, a few are greeks, some are Italians, some are Americans. But if at all possible, avoid mid-priced restaurants whose kitchens are staffed by people who don't come from a cooking culture, but have been trained to cook as a low-wage job.

It was just a joke without any pyschological implications or manifestations.

To those of you who do not know New York.

I live in a residential/semi-tourist area. My wife and I specialize in inexpensive good restaurants, which are becoming harder to find. And yes, we have eaten at many places that were bad, but of course there are many to which we return. ALmost all are samll operations.

And as far as I can tell they actually wash the plates and the silverware.

"As an example we have dined at Mesa Grill, Oceana, Otto, Dopo Teatro, Victor's Cafe, Bobby Van's, Tribeca Grill, Katz's deli, The Water club. "

Hey ga9497: How did you come up with those restaurants?

b_b

Aduchamp,

Thanks for the clarification. You missed my point about the dishes. Perhaps I didn't type it up right. I wasn't saying that the restaurants didn't wash their dishes. I'm saying that the main reason most of the customers are sitting there is that they'd rather not cook for themselves that night or clean up. And this is especially true in places like the Upper West Side and Park Slope. You can make a good living in a good location serving very mediocre food to people who are just too tired to cook, and who make the rounds two or three times a week eating in the local Chinese, the local Thai, the local Mexican, blah blah. These places will deliver the bad food as well.

I was browsing the NYT online and sure enough -- there was another one of those articles today about food-fashion on the cheap, this time in Barcelona. The pattern of the Times critics is to ooh-and-aahh and drool over astronomically priced food, which 90 percent of their readers can't afford to eat, and then run articles for another six months about where to find cheap knock-offs of expensive food.

The result has been an explosion of ridiculous menus in New York and a corruption of even the most basic cuisines. I think a lot of people shelling out $200 or more per week eating in restaurants have lost any concept of what it means to eat a nice satisfying meal that sits well on the stomach.

It is sheer luck when a tourist coming into NYC is going to be able to sort the rare wheat from the chaf at $50 per head. And they will certainly eat a lot of lousy food if they rely on reviews online from such populist places as yelp, menupages, zagat (yes, zagat), and all the other vox pop. Or the NYTimes.

Perhaps those of you who feel so confident such a list of good restaurants can be compiled from afar should tell us whose opinion you follow. A tourist hasn't got the time to try 10 different restos in the neighborhood to find the one that serves a digestible three-course meal with drinks for $50 per person.

I guess we are fortunate that in our neighborhood, the East Village, there are many spots where we can go for decent value and food. There are many younger people in the neighborhood, who whether they can afford it or not, eat out.

I have posted a list of places we prefer but I omit spots such as Cafe Brama or Telephone, where you can get a servicable burger or something else for a reasonable price. Is it great or interesting dining, aboslutely not, but they are honest restaurants.

But I think to dismiss entire neighborhoods out of hand due to the neighborhood demigraphics is absurd.

I am the opposite of you, I find I pay expotentially more in midtown for food that is incrementally better. But it nothing to do with the people who live or work there but with quality/price relationship.

Of the places you have listed we like Mesa Grill and Katz's but find Tribeca grill a shade above ordinary, and clearly not worth the money. And to be honest we have not eaten at Victor's in over 10 years because the last meals we had there carelessly prepared.

Here's a partial list of restaurants where my partner and I ate dinners (or lunches -- so marked) during the month of June. Each one listed was less than $100 for two not counting drinks and wine -- most were less than $75. I have eliminated any I wouldn't recommend with confidence.

Pietrasanto, 9th in the 40's. Traditional Italian, very inexpensive.

Saigon48 (48th at 8th) LUNCH, 2 courses for $6.95, very good.

Nero, Meatpacking District, excellent Italian with great casual atmosphere.

Roberto Passon, 50th at 9th. Amazing LUNCH, three courses with lots of choices for a total of $13. Dinner there twice, really excellent value.

Bistecca Fiorentina -- 46th near 8th. The Florentine Steak for two will hit the high end of your budget if you get much of anything with it, but a full menu, very good.

Joe Allen's -- 46th near 8th. Great for pre or post theatre. Varied menu and it would be difficult to spend your limit there.

Saucy. 75th and York Ave. Interesting fun place where you choose steak or chicken topped with any of dozens of really good sauces. More unscale than it sounds.

Kellari Taverna -- 44th, near 5th.
Greek, upscale. Great grilled fish and other dishes. We spent just over $100 including a drink each.

Aleo -- 20th near 5th. Really good food in a smallish Italian place. More contemporary Italian than classic.

Tagine -- 9th near 40th. Tagines and Cous Cous -- excellent and great value, just go on a bellydancer night and not on open mike "comedy" night.

Brasserie 52 -- 9th near 52nd. French brasserie type place with traditional brasserie food.

Sosa Borella -- 8th at 50th. Italian/Argentina. Very flavorful food with great prices.

Red Cat -- in Chelsea. Really great place at the upper end of your budget, but easily worth it. Big portions, so you may be happy with just an entree or splitting one appetizer in addition. Outstanding food for the price in my book.

Dinousaur BarBQ, up in Harlem, near the East River. Worth the trip for barn-like atmosphere and really good BarBQ cheap!

Cascina, 9th near 45th. Surprisingly good Italian, very reasonable. I love their Bucatini Amatriciana which rivals any I've had in Rome. And super value on inexpensive but good house wines.

Uncle Nick's -- Casual Greek on 9th near 51st. Very good food and varied menu. Gyros or tapas or full meals.

La Bonne Soup -- 55th near 6th. LUNCH. Great value of wonderful soups, French sandwiches (the Croque monsieur or madame is the REAL thing), and salads. Great value with a glass of wine included in some combos.

Apizz -- off the beaten track in Lower East Side. Great recommendation from here. A delightful small romantic place with the BEST meatballs in the world, and a wild boar lasagna to die for.

AOC. Traditional but casual French in Greenwich Village. Really good food like Coq au Vin or Cassoulet at good prices.

Film Center Cafe -- 9th near 44th. Contemporary place with a young crowd, lively bar scene and good food at amazingly low prices. Was my wonderful goat cheese encrusted salmon, sauteed spinach, and mashed potatoes really only $18?

Lupa -- Maria Batali's casual restaurant in Greenwich Village. Hard to get into at night, but GREAT for LUNCH. Sample a variety of things, all great.

Eatery -- 9th near 53rd. Like a contemporary diner with a young crowd and terrific food.


These are just a handful. Hundreds more like them all over the city.

check out this great site that i love using to narrow down restaurant choices, www.uloveny.com. you can search for restaurants you know, or you can type in cuisine and see what comes up, or you can just browse. like if you're looking for a good burger place, you'll find a ton of options, like shake shack-- (http://uloveny.com/index.php/nyc/ven...99/shake_shack)
enjoy! :-)

I also narrowed it down by neighborhoods first then the type of cuisine, using menupages.com.

another menupages.com fan here. I have lived on the upper west side, gramercy, and east village and find it easiest to search by neighborhood and then try a few cuisines that sound interesting. You can sort by all kinds of things - if you are looking for brunch, or pretheater, etc. You can sort by rating, and by price as well. I will sort by rating but read the reviews - as someone mentioned, sometimes people give a bad review for something pretty random or because they were not a fan of a given type of cuisine. I find that looking at the menus myself & the prices helps me figure out if there's something that sounds tasty, and how much the meal I would plan on ordering would cost.

So I guess that can be summarized as:

1. pick a neighborhood
2. pick a cuisine
3. sort by highest rated
4. click on restaurants in your price range (e.g. ignore the $$$$$ one even if it's rated highest)
5. read a few reviews, check out menu, see if there are multiple things that grab your attention or if there's only 1 or 2 things you'd order.
6. repeat with a 2nd or 3rd cuisine type until you are satisfied.

ga9497; for starters, as a New Yorker, I can highly recommend Neopatrick's observations.

He is both a theatre & food connoisseur & stays in NYC every year for a month. His picks range the gamut in cuisine and are usually spot on so newbies can enjoy NYC w/o breaking the bank.