Check out Empellón Taqueria‘s East-Side sister, Empellón Cocina, which recently opened on First Avenue.  Chef Alex Stupak has created an exciting menu (minus tacos) which features delicious small and shared plates. Their guacamole is off the charts and was recently listed in New York Magazine’s Best Of New York! You can book a table or walk in and take a seat at the bar – their Tequila and Mezcal cocktails are sublime.  Well worth exploring and just a stone’s throw away from the Hotel.

With a plethora of prohibition-style speakeasies in the city nowadays, it’s tricky to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.  But there are few hidden bars that are always worth discovering…

PDT, for instance, is a modern classic.  Standing for ‘Please Don’t Tell’, this cocktail bar is located in an unlikely spot – Crif Dogs on St. Marks Place. Once inside you have to step into a phone-booth and announce yourself to the hostess via telephone. The cocktails are to die for, as are the specialty hot dogs by New York super-chefs like Wylie Dufresne and David Chang. And a lovely feature is that there is no standing room; they only allow in the number of people who can actually get a seat. To be safe you can make a same day reservation or you can walk in but prepare to wait!