A late summer visit to Manhattan delivers a wonderful Sunday lunch at Smithereens, followed by art viewing at Sotheby’s and drinks at the Central Park Boathouse.
Smithereens
The East Village seafood restaurant Smithereens serves dinner only every day but Sunday, when it offers a four-course prix fixe lunch for $52, including their amazing molasses-laden Adama bread (with seaweed butter) as a starter. The subterranean downtown vibe mismatches the glorious weather outside, but you can’t beat New England-style seafood with an edgy East Village twist. A big thumbs-up for Smithereens.
Sotheby’s
Last year, the auction house Sotheby’s took over the historic Brutalist Breuer building on East 75th after the Whitney Museum decamped to new quarters downtown. Sotheby’s offers free exhibitions of various items coming up for auction.
The line to get into today’s exhibit stretches around the block, but security somehow mistakes us for art buyers and sends us directly in. We decide not to feel guilty about this special privilege and spend a nice hour viewing works by Colombian artist Fernando Botero from his New York years, mostly in the 1960s.
Autorretrato a la edad de 1 año (Self-Portrait at the Age of 1) by Botero, oil on canvas, 1966
Prelados bañándose en un rio (Prelates Bathing in a River) by Botero, oil on canvas, 1968
Homenaje a Cézanne (Homage to Cézanne ) by Botero, oil on canvas, 1963
Central Park Boathouse
A short ten-minute walk from Sotheby’s brings us to a true New York jewel beside Central Park Lake — the Central Park Boathouse. Both levels of the restaurant face the water and the late-afternoon sun. We order drinks and a light appetizer and enjoy the view, with rowboats bobbing in the water and koi lurking near the restaurant’s edge in hopes that someone will throw them some food.
Afterward, we stroll through the great breathing space that is Central Park, thinking: When New York is great, there’s no place like it.
