Books, Arts & Manners: Train Bleu en Vert

Eating out in New York has become a serious problem. The places where one can get the sorts of food one cannot possibly prepare at home (and what better reason is there for eating out?) have become prohibitively expensive. Inexpensive food, outside of luncheonettes, is virtually inedible. And what’s more, the craze for creating “interesting” surroundings—English pubs, flower gardens, the avant-garde look (meaning brick walls)—has made all too many restaurateurs feel that food and service are secondary, if not negligible. However, recently I have found a place that has pleased me and the people I’ve introduced to it, and I commend it to anyone who may be visiting New York this summer.

The restaurant is located in—of all places—Bloomingdale’s, the trendy New York department store, which foreigners find so fascinating that the Queen of England chose to visit it on her last trip to New York. Bloomingdale’s is a trip in itself, as any New Yorker knows, offering boutiques, supermodern lighting and arrangements, “diversified buying experiences” (as one Bloomingdale’s buyer put it to me), and, every Saturday afternoon, a meeting point for the trendy singles who are still single at that hour.

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Nika Hazelton

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Eating out in New York has become a serious problem. The places where one can get the sorts of food one cannot possibly prepare at home (and what better reason is there for eating out?) have become prohibitively expensive. Inexpensive food, outside of luncheonettes, is virtually inedible. And what’s more, the craze for creating “interesting” surroundings—English pubs, flower gardens, the avant-garde look (meaning brick walls)—has made all too many restaurateurs feel that food and service are secondary, if not negligible. However, recently I have found a place that has pleased me and the people I’ve introduced to it, and I commend it to anyone who may be visiting New York this summer.

The restaurant is located in—of all places—Bloomingdale’s, the trendy New York department store, which foreigners find so fascinating that the Queen of England chose to visit it on her last trip to New York. Bloomingdale’s is a trip in itself, as any New Yorker knows, offering boutiques, supermodern lighting and arrangements, “diversified buying experiences” (as one Bloomingdale’s buyer put it to me), and, every Saturday afternoon, a meeting point for the trendy singles who are still single at that hour.