Brunch in New York

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Beauty & Essex is, quite simply, a fantastic and innovative brunch experience—absolutely worth putting on your brunch ‘bucket list’ whether you’re a hip local Brooklynite day-tripping into the city or an Arkansas traveler just passing through.

Brought to you by Portuguese-American chef/owner Chris Santos, he of the equally-uber-hip Stanton Social eating club nearby, this place takes “speakeasy” to new heights: you actually enter through a pawn shop that looks like a real pawn shop. (On closer examination, it is real. You can actually buy the guitars hanging up on the wall and the books stacked up in a corner, for the prices indicated on the tags.) But, truth be told, this pawn operation is mostly just a cool façade—and a mighty convincing one, too. If you didn’t know there was a restaurant here, you’d probably walk right on by it. In fact, even knowing it’s here, it’s a little hard to believe this is actually the place given the drab surroundings. But it is. Read the rest of this entry »

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First things first : The Park takes some very serious looking to find. There’s virtually no chance this is “on the way” to anywhere else you’re ever going to need to be, and—what do you know?—there isn’t actually a park anywhere near this place. Go figure.

On the other hand, you could argue they’ve brought the park indoors, right into the restaurant. So there is that. And if it’s greenhouse-style (!) brunching you’re after, this is one of your best choices in the entire city—if you’re willing to hike all the way west to Tenth Avenue, and then ignore the West Side Highway traffic whizzing right by your ear. Read the rest of this entry »