Fabiola Beracasa Gets Us Into the Gramercy Park Hotel’s Roof Club
How do you get to the Roof Club and Landscaped Garden of the Gramercy Park Hotel? Just take the elevator. Thing is, you’re going to need a private membership card to key it — and that’s why we suggest you set aside any ambition of seeing the place’s Damien Hirst paintings and amazing view in person and simply let Fabiola Beracasa give you the video tour. Chances are, even if you have $545 for a room or the wherewithal to gain admittance, you’re not going to have a drinking companion as lovely as Fab.
Greenwich Village to Get Another Gastropub, If You Want to Call It ThatThe definition of a gastropub, as Adam Platt points out in his E.U. review this week, is open to question. But there’s no doubt that even the most broadly defined one is an upgrade over a bar with bad food, or no food at all. The Half-Pint, on West 3rd Street, will soon be pouring hand-drawn cask ale and over 60 kinds of bottled beer for NYU students and other locals, as well as administering a better-than-it-has-to-be food program. Chef-owner Mark Whelan’s menu includes fried Wisconsin cheese curds, crusted yellowfin tuna over salad, and some creative rethinkings of familiar bar standards, such as a ground-bratwurst burger, and a Reuben pizza with French dressing, sauerkraut, pastrami, and Swiss cheese. (For our part, we plan to stick to cask ale and traditional bar pies with Esposito sausage and cremini mushrooms. At least for the first few pints.) The Half Pint is slotted to open Memorial Day weekend.
The Half-Pint, 76 W. 3rd St., nr. Thompson St.; no phone yet.
The Half Pint menu
