Confessions of a Wino

When in New York, I can’t afford to stay in the Standard Hotel, so I pretend I’m a guest by eating in the Grill, and there are few better meals there than brunch on a chilled sunny Sunday morning. Another favourite spot of mine in New York is the Highline Park, which not coincidentally, skewers the hotel like a concrete, meadow grass and shrub kebab.

Converted from a disused raised platform freight railway, it is one of the golden nuggets of Manhattan. A stroll on a crisp February morning in Feb 2012, is all the more impressive for having seen it as recently as last May. Here are two photos from a similar position on equally stunning days, for different reasons. The Standard Hotel stands majestically in the background.

If you visit the Highline, do drop down to street level at 13th Street and Washington and even if you don’t like the food at The Standard Grill, you can pocket one of their cute condiment sets. Assuming you are honest, you can get them legally for just $25.

The Standard Grill
848 Washington St at 13th St,
Meatpacking District
10014
New York
T: +1 212 645 4100
W: thestandardgrill.com

The Highline runs from West Village, Gansvoort Street through the Meatpacking district and Chelsea up to 30th Street and is still being extended, hopefully up to 34th Street, which will make it SOME WALK…Beautiful stuff, stunning redevelopment, worth funding.
W: www.thehighline.org

Under the High Line, one of the seven wonders of New York City, where peace and tranquility mix with rare greenery on a former raised platform railway converted to a unique public park, lies a restaurant of some repute.  A place that, although set amongst meatpacking factories, has thoughtfully empathised with, and even beaten a path for other trendy venues to raise the Standard of this eponymously named district of New York City.  And yet a “Grill” that has remarkably few items on the menu that might ever see a char broiler.   For example, I had oysters followed by shrimp fettuccini.  Although I use the word ‘followed’ in a loose literal sense, or perhaps as its own antonym since the main courses arrived before the starters. This was one of a number of service fiascos we experienced when lunching there on the last day of a New York trip.

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