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“The Standard Grill”

Occasion:	Cuisine:	Area:	Cost:	Rating:
Night Out	New American	MeatPacking	Moderate	Great

It has been about a year since I stepped foot in the Meatpacking District. I know it’s a long time, but there were circumstances. I moved to Brooklyn, was planning my wedding, then got pregnant, and somehow waddling around the cobblestone streets, trying to keep my balance while the beautiful people strutted past in their Loubutains was not really high on my agenda. I think the last time I was there was for a Diane Von Furstenberg sample sale and at the time, the High Line and Andre Balazs' Standard Hotel were works in progress, very far from completion.

So the other night, when Susie, Jamie and I met for dinner at The Standard Grill, my breath left my body when I took in the scene unfolding before me. As I walked down 14th Street, passing shiny new shops where just a few years ago they were hauling bloody carcasses across the cement, I spied treetops peaking out above the formerly abandoned 80-year-old rails in the sky. And as I turned down Washington Street, right there across the street from Hector’s Café loomed The Standard Hotel, an oasis of design against the night sky. Wow.

Make no mistake. Even to someone who has been to the Meatpacking a bit more frequently than I (that would be pretty much anyone not living under a rock), The Standard Hotel is a spectacular sight. It hovers over the High Line like a spaceship—albeit one built by Polshek Partnership’s Todd Schliemann in Le Corbusier style, tall stretches of cool glass and strong layers of graying mortar, propped up on two hulking pillars confidently straddling the High Line and the citizens of the Meatpacking: slick-haired men with chest hair boldly exposed, hipsters in those de rigueur straw top hats, and your usual flank of long legged lovelies in stilettos sticking into cobblestone streets.

Like most restaurants Balazs opens, The Standard Grill is a powerful magnet for A-List crowds and, well, crowds in general. It’s located in a space under the hotel’s belly, and like the hotel, it is a design masterpiece. This should come as no surprise. Balazs, like Keith McNally, is not one for just serving food. He serves an experience, detailed down to the doorknobs, that speaks to a theme or a feeling. Whether it’s St. Tropez at Sunset Beach in Shelter Island, or a New York grill circa 1940 as in The Standard, you are transported. Prepare to be moved.

While there’s a bit of an attitude at the ... [more, click below]

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Posted: August 30, 2009

Other restaurants in MeatPacking :
+ Paradou   + Florent   + One   + Bivio   + Spice Market   + Ono   + 5 Ninth   + Fatty Crab   + Del Posto   + Morimoto   + Los Dados   + 5 Ninth   + Merkato 55   + Scarpetta   + The John Dory   + The Standard Grill   + Bill's Bar & Burger   

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