Manhattan / Midtown East
Midtown East
Restaurants
Two Michelin stars, five sushi counters, and an $18 lunch served for exactly one hour.
Checking which of these 15 kitchens are open right now…
- 15 verified restaurants
- lunch from $18
- 5 sushi counters
- 2 Michelin stars
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The best restaurants in Midtown East right now are Aquavit, which holds two Michelin stars and serves a $80 two-course lunch in the same room as its $305 tasting menu; Sushi Yasuda, where chef’s-choice sushi is $60 at a table and $195 at the counter; The Grill in the Seagram Building; P.J. Clarke’s, the 1884 saloon with a $24 cheeseburger and a midnight close; and Sakagura, a basement sake den whose $18 lunch is served for exactly one hour. Midtown East runs east of Fifth Avenue between 42nd and 59th — Grand Central at one corner, the Plaza District at the other. More than anywhere else in Manhattan it is a lunch neighbourhood, and this guide is arranged that way: the four rooms worth the money, then the sushi, then where to actually eat at one o’clock on a Tuesday. Every price below came off the restaurant’s own menu. Where a place publishes no prices, we say so instead of guessing.
The short version
- Best overallAquavit — two Michelin stars, and a $80 two-course lunch in the same dining room as the $305 tasting.
- Best valueSakagura — the $18 Tokudashi lunch, served 11:30 to 12:30 only. Show up at one and it is gone.
- Best sushiSushi Yasuda — $60 for chef’s-choice at a table, $195 if you sit at the counter.
- Open latestP.J. Clarke’s — the 1884 saloon, midnight Tuesday to Saturday, open seven days.
- One dish, one priceLe Relais de Venise — $38 steak frites. No menu, no reservations.
At a glance
Sorted the way you will use it. Tap a number on the map to place any of them.
| Restaurant | Known for | Best for | Hours | $ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aquavit | Nordic tasting menus, 2 Michelin stars | A splurge lunch | Mon–Sat, closed Sun | $$$ |
| The Grill | Mid-century chophouse, Philip Johnson room | Impressing someone | Mon–Sat, closed Sun | $$$ |
| Smith & Wollensky | Dry-aged prime, 1977 corner institution | A steak on an expense account | Daily from 5pm | $$$ |
| Casa Lever | Northern Italian inside Lever House | A lunch you are billing | Mon–Fri 7am–10pm | $$$ |
| Sushi Yasuda | Edomae sushi since 1999 | Serious sushi at a table price | Mon–Sat, closed Sun | $$$ |
| Hatsuhana | The city’s longest-running sushi specialist | A $34 sushi lunch | Mon–Fri only | $$$ |
| sushi AMANE | Fixed omakase counter | A booked-ahead occasion | Seatings 6pm & 8:30pm | $$$ |
| Sushi Ann | Edomae sushi, quiet room | Omakase without the counter tax | Mon–Sat, closed Sun | $$$ |
| Kurumazushi | Old-school high-end sushi | Lunch, where the price is fixed | Mon–Fri only | $$$ |
| Sakagura | 260+ sakes, izakaya cooking | The $18 lunch, if you are early | Mon–Sat, closed Sun | $$$ |
| Izakaya Futago | Soba, yakitori, donburi lunch sets | A $20 lunch near Grand Central | Daily | $$$ |
| Le Relais de Venise L’Entrecôte | Contre-filet, secret sauce, second helping | Deciding nothing | Lunch & dinner, call for days | $$$ |
| TAO Uptown | Pan-Asian, 16ft Buddha, Peking duck | The $30 weekday prix-fixe | Daily, no weekend lunch | $$$ |
| P.J. Clarke’s | Burgers, oysters, 1884 saloon | Any day, any hour | Seven days, 11:30am–late | $$$ |
| Nerai | Upscale Greek seafood | A whole fish at a known price | Mon–Sat, closed Sun | $$$ |
Map: where these 15 restaurants are
Everything here is walkable from the 6 at 51st, the E/M at Lex-53rd, or Grand Central. Nothing is west of Fifth.
Pins are address-derived. Sakagura is in the basement at 211 East 43rd and Kurumazushi is on the second floor at 7 East 47th – neither has street presence.
The four rooms Midtown East is known for
The ones people come across town for. Two of them publish no prices at all, which is its own kind of information. More in our best restaurants in NYC guide.
Aquavit Open now
Two Michelin stars on the current list, and the sane way in is lunch. Dinner is a $305 chef’s tasting with a $50-per-person deposit taken when you book; lunch is $80 for two courses or $95 for three, same dining room, same kitchen. The Local Move is the Bar Room — a la carte, a $25 deposit instead of $50, and they will seat one to four. The cooking is Nordic in the specific sense: Swedish meatballs with lingonberry and pickled cucumber, an Arctic Bird’s Nest of goat cheese parfait and sea buckthorn curd. The Honest Caveat: Saturday is dinner only and Sunday it is dark, so this is a weekday plan. Booking runs through Tock, and the deposit is charged up front.
The Grill Open now
Philip Johnson’s dining room in the Seagram Building, and the room is the reason to come — the rippling metal curtains, the Four Seasons bones, the mid-century chophouse cooking Major Food Group put back into it. Dover sole, lobster a la Newburg, avocado crab Louis, dry-aged steaks carved at the table. Two Honest Caveats, both real. First, they publish no prices at all — not on the site, not on the menus page, nowhere — so go in expecting the number to match the room. Second, the dress code is written down and enforced: no shorts, no open-toed shoes, no tank tops, no athletic wear, no baseball caps, and they reserve the right to refuse anyone not ‘sufficiently well-presented.’ Closed Sunday.
thegrillnewyork.com · See our best steakhouses in NYC
Smith & Wollensky Open now
The steakhouse is the steakhouse: dry-aged prime, $65 for the filet, $64 for the NY sirloin, $155 for the porterhouse for two, a $32 Maryland crab cake, and a dining room built for expense accounts. It is good and it costs what it costs. The Local Move is the door to the left. Wollensky’s Grill, the same kitchen’s casual room at 201 East 49th, is open 11:30am to 1am seven days a week, and the prime Wollensky’s burger there is $25, the filet mignon sandwich $31, the famous pea soup $15. Same beef, a third of the price, and it is the only part of this address serving late or on a Sunday. The Honest Caveat: the main room’s lunch is a two-hour weekday window with no everyday prix-fixe.
Casa Lever Open now
The Sant Ambroeus group’s Milanese room inside Lever House, hung with Warhol portraits, running on the weekday rhythm of the block it sits on: breakfast from 7am, lunch from noon, dinner until 10pm, Monday to Friday. This is a 1pm room — the kind of Northern Italian cooking that gets ordered by people who are billing it. The Honest Caveat is unusually literal here, because the restaurant’s own website contradicts itself: the homepage says ‘Saturday–Sunday: Closed’ and the reservations page says ‘Saturday: dinner only, from 5:30pm.’ They agree only that Sunday is dark. Call before you plan a weekend around it. No prices are published anywhere on the site. The garden is seasonal, May through fall.
casalever.com · See our best Italian restaurants in NYC
Sushi, and there is a lot of it
Five sushi counters in seventeen blocks, from a $34 lunch set to a $250 fixed omakase. See our best sushi in NYC guide for the citywide picks.
Sushi Yasuda Open now
Edomae sushi on East 43rd, and the pricing forks hard depending on where they seat you. At a table you can order Sushi Toku — ten pieces and a roll, chef’s choice — for $60. If you request the omakase bar with a named chef, their own reservations page says you are then required to order omakase, which is $195. Both are worth it; only one is a lunch. The Local Move: book noon, because last seating is 1:30pm and last orders are 2:15. The Honest Caveat is the cancellation policy — cancelling after 4pm on the day, or arriving more than ten minutes late, can trigger a fee of $100 per guest. Closed Sunday and every national holiday. Gindara miso kasuzuke is $27.50 if you want one cooked thing.
sushiyasuda.com · See our best sushi in NYC
Hatsuhana Open now
Open since 1976 and still the most reliable sushi lunch in the Forties. The Nami set is $34, the Jo is $37, Sushi Prime $40, and the Deluxe ‘Tokujo’ $53. Their signature lacquer box, the Box of Dreams, is $60 at lunch and $62 at dinner. Dinner omakase runs $115 for sushi and sashimi, $125 for fifteen pieces, $139 for eighteen. The Local Move: order the Box of Dreams to go and it is $51 instead of $60 — a $9 swing on the same box. The Honest Caveat, and it catches people constantly: this place is weekday-only, closed both Saturday and Sunday, and it shuts completely between 2:30 and 5:30pm. It has also been running a 50th-anniversary renovation with second-floor-only seating and no step-free access — call first.
hatsuhana.com · See our best sushi in NYC
sushi AMANE
A counter on East 44th that serves exactly one thing: a $250 omakase, at 6pm or 8:30pm, seven nights a week. There is no a la carte, no lunch, no shorter version. Reservations open on Resy thirty days ahead and release daily at noon Eastern. The Honest Caveat is the policy, and it is the strictest on this page: cancel inside 72 hours, cut your party size inside 72 hours, or no-show, and you are charged the full $250 a head. Turn up more than fifteen minutes late and you are not seated — and still charged. Guests must be twelve or older, and parties of five or more carry a 20% service charge. Worth it if the format is what you want. Punishing if your evening moves. There is no pill on this card because these are fixed seatings, not an open door.
sushi-amane.com · See our best sushi in NYC
Sushi Ann Open now
A quiet Edomae room between Madison and Park, and the numbers are the whole argument. Lunch sets run $52 for eight pieces and a roll, $60 for ten, $66 for the sushi-and-sashimi. Dinner omakase starts at $90 for ten pieces, $155 for fifteen, $170 for the sashimi-and-sushi version. There is a small kitchen menu too: $8 edamame, $23 soft-shell crab tempura, $38 marinated black cod. The Why: $90 buys you a chef’s omakase in Midtown East, which is a little over a third of what the counters on 44th are asking, in a room where you can hear the person across from you. Saturday is dinner only. Sunday it is closed. Book on Resy.
sushiann.net · See our best sushi in NYC
Kurumazushi Open now
A second-floor room on 47th with no street presence and one of the more honest menus in the city. The dinner prices are printed as ‘starting at’ — $160 for sushi, $180 for the Kurumazushi dinner, $300 for omakase — under a footnote explaining that the price depends on the rarity and species of what the chef hands you, and inviting you to tell them your budget beforehand. Take them up on that. It is not a trap, it is an instruction. The Local Move is lunch, where the numbers are fixed and reasonable: Sushi Deluxe $40, Sashimi Special $45, Chirashi Special $55. The Honest Caveat: weekdays only, last orders around 9pm, closed both weekend days. There is no version of this that is not a workday.
kurumazushi.com · See our best sushi in NYC
Lunch, which is what this neighbourhood is actually for
The weekday middle of the day is when Midtown East is at its best and cheapest. More in our best lunch in NYC guide.
Sakagura Open now
Down a staircase inside an unmarked office lobby on 43rd — the address alone will not get you there — is a sake den that has been running since 1996 with more than 260 bottles on the list. The Tokudashi lunch is $18 and comes with a half udon, and here is the part nobody mentions: it is served 11:30 to 12:30 only. Turn up at one and it is gone. The rest of the lunch menu holds at $18 for kake soba or udon and $22 for the chicken cutlet teishoku. At night it climbs — $17 hirame carpaccio, $26 gindara miso yaki, $79 for the A5 wagyu filet, $90 for uni soba. The Honest Caveat: closed Sunday, and you will walk straight past the door the first time.
sakagura.com · See our best Japanese restaurants in NYC
Izakaya Futago Open now
This is the old Soba Totto space under new ownership and branding, and the menu has not entirely let go: it still lists a ‘Soba Totto Green Salad.’ Weekday lunch is the reason to know it. Katsu don with soba is $20, salmon don and soba $22, the daily chef special $24, kaisen don $29, sashimi and tempura with soba $33 — all of it two blocks from Grand Central. Yakitori runs $4 to $18. The Local Move: it shares 211 East 43rd with Sakagura, which is in the basement, so if one has a wait, walk to the other. The Honest Caveat: dinner donburi climbs to $85 for uni ikura, so the same room is cheap at noon and expensive at eight. It is the only one of the pair open on a Sunday.
izakaya-futago.com · See our best Japanese restaurants in NYC
Le Relais de Venise L’Entrecôte
One dish, one price: grilled contre-filet, pommes allumettes, the green sauce nobody will explain, and a walnut salad first. $38, the same at lunch and at dinner. The only questions you will be asked are how you want it cooked and what you are drinking, and a second helping of steak arrives whether you have room or not. Go Here Instead of a steakhouse when you want beef and not a decision. The Honest Caveat is the address: they moved off 590 Lexington and a lot of listings, OpenTable included, still print the dead one. It is 155 East 54th, between Lexington and Third. They take no reservations, so the 1pm rush means a line, and their own site publishes the hours but never says which days — call before a Sunday trip. That is also why this card has no open-now pill.
TAO Uptown Open now
A pan-Asian temple off 58th with a sixteen-foot Buddha and a DJ, which is either exactly what you want or exactly what you do not. The value case is not in dispute though: Monday to Friday there is a $30 two-course prix-fixe — a starter like the Thai chicken lettuce wraps, a main like the crying tiger hanger steak — with dessert for $5 more. That is the cheapest sit-down deal on this page after Sakagura. A la carte it is a $94 Peking duck for two, $50 miso-roasted Chilean sea bass, $43 crispy orange chicken, $26 spicy tuna tartare on crispy rice. The Honest Caveat: there is no weekend lunch at all. Saturday and Sunday the doors stay shut until 4pm.
taogroup.com · See our best Asian restaurants in NYC
A burger and a whole fish
The two you can walk into without a plan. More in our date-night restaurants guide.
P.J. Clarke’s Open now
The 1884 original, a red-brick holdout the office towers grew around, and the most useful address in Midtown East precisely because it refuses to behave like Midtown East. Open 11:30am to midnight Tuesday through Saturday and to 11pm Sunday and Monday — no split service, no dark days, no 2:30 shutdown. The 1884 cheeseburger is $24, the Cadillac with double smoked bacon is $27, half a dozen East Coast oysters $25 and a dozen $48, the lobster roll $35. The Honest Caveat: there is no lunch discount, the menu is priced identically at noon and at ten at night. Nat King Cole named the Cadillac in 1958 and Sinatra drank at Table 20, and the room has been trading on that ever since — fairly, for once.
pjclarkes.com · See our best burgers in NYC
Nerai Open now
Upscale Greek on 54th between Park and Madison, and the reason it is here rather than one of the flashier Greek rooms nearby is simple: it prints the number. Lavraki — whole grilled loup de mer, deboned at the table — is $44. Not market price, not ‘ask your server,’ not by the pound. Grilled octopus is $32, lamb chops $59, Dover sole $80, and the $23 Greek salad is a genuine lunch on its own. The Local Move is that weekday lunch, 11:30 to 2:30, when the same kitchen is cheaper and the room is quiet. The Honest Caveat: split service — the kitchen shuts at 2:30 and does not reopen until 5 — there is no Saturday lunch, and Sunday it is closed. Booking runs through SevenRooms.
nerainyc.com · See our best Greek restaurants in NYC
Midtown East restaurants: FAQ
What are the best restaurants in Midtown East?
Aquavit is the highest-rated, with two Michelin stars and an $80 two-course lunch. Sushi Yasuda is the best sushi, at $60 for chef’s-choice at a table. The Grill in the Seagram Building is the most striking room. P.J. Clarke’s, open since 1884, has a $24 cheeseburger and is the only one of the fifteen open seven days a week.
Where is the best sushi in Midtown East?
Sushi Yasuda on East 43rd, where Sushi Toku is $60 at a table and omakase is $195 at the counter. Hatsuhana on East 48th has the cheapest good sushi lunch at $34. Sushi Ann on East 51st has the lowest dinner omakase entry at $90. sushi AMANE is a fixed $250 omakase with 6pm and 8:30pm seatings, and Kurumazushi is a second-floor room where lunch is $40 and dinner starts at $160.
Where should I go for lunch in Midtown East?
Sakagura has the cheapest lunch at $18, but it is only served from 11:30 to 12:30. TAO Uptown runs a $30 two-course prix-fixe Monday to Friday. Izakaya Futago does a $20 katsu don and soba set. Le Relais de Venise serves one dish, steak frites, for $38 at lunch and dinner alike. Aquavit’s two-course lunch is $80.
What is open in Midtown East on a Sunday?
Not much. Nine of the fifteen restaurants in this guide are closed on Sunday, and Hatsuhana and Kurumazushi close both Saturday and Sunday. P.J. Clarke’s is open seven days until 11pm on Sunday, TAO Uptown opens at 4pm, Izakaya Futago serves dinner, and Wollensky’s Grill next to Smith & Wollensky runs 11:30am to 1am daily.
Where exactly is Midtown East?
Midtown East is the part of Manhattan east of Fifth Avenue between roughly 42nd and 59th Street, bounded by the East River. Grand Central sits at its southwest corner and the Plaza District at its north end. It is distinct from Midtown West and the Theater District, which are west of Fifth, and from Murray Hill and Kips Bay, which are south of 42nd.
One pattern worth naming before you go: Midtown East empties out on the weekend, and its restaurants have adapted. Nine of the fifteen here are closed on Sunday, and Hatsuhana and Kurumazushi are shut both Saturday and Sunday. If you are making a weekend plan on this side of Fifth, check the hours column above first — or just go to P.J. Clarke’s, which has been open seven days since 1884.
Nearby: Midtown happy hours · Murray Hill · Gramercy · Grand Central restaurants · all of Manhattan
More guides: Best sushi in NYC · Best steakhouses · Best lunch in NYC · Michelin-starred restaurants · West Village restaurants · Williamsburg restaurants
