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Alison: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. New York City Restaurant Week has begun from now until Sunday, February 12th. More than 500 restaurants around the city are offering prefixed meals for dinner, brunch, and lunch. It is a great chance to try some new places for the first time or snag a meal at one of those swanky restaurants for a discounted price. The cap is $60 a person, but I did say more than 500 restaurants, which might feel daunting to sort through. Luckily, a friend of the show and Eater NY senior critic Robert Sietsema is joining us to give us his top selections for the best deals in the city. Robert, thanks for being with us.

Robert: Hey, Alison. Thanks so much for having me on.

Alison: Listeners, we want to hear from you. Where are you looking forward to eating this Restaurant Week? What's the best Restaurant Week meal you've ever had? What restaurants would you recommend to someone looking for a great Restaurant Week deal? Our phone lines are open. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC, our social media's available as well, @AllOfItWNYC. That's both Twitter and Instagram. We are talking about Restaurant Week deals. Robert, what is the sign you're getting a good deal when you look at a restaurant menu during this week?

Robert: Like every other thing, it's like buyer beware. A lot of the deals are really good, you really have to do a little due diligence. Either read my piece in the Eater NY and select one of those 10 restaurants or do some scouting around yourself. There is an easy-to-find website that the Tourism Authority offers, and it lists all 500 of the restaurants. There's this scanty information, but once you find the restaurants that are participating, go right to their website. It's a very good sign if they have the menu posted. You can decide if you want to eat a roast chicken or if you want to eat snails in garlic butter. Whatever you want to eat. I'll have to say that there's a lot more restaurants in Manhattan and a few in Brooklyn, and not a lot in Queens, or in the Bronx, or in Staten Island. If you live in those boroughs and want to eat on home turf, you're out of luck, but everyone likes to go into Manhattan and eating, right?

Alison: Sure. What is a sign that maybe it's not worth it?

Robert: I would look at the Restaurant Week menu, and I would look at the regular menu, and if the regular menu is filled with steaks and pricey seafood, and you look at the Restaurant Week menu and it has crepes and other very starchy things, I would think it was not such a good deal. Although at fancy restaurants $45 for dinner could be pretty inexpensive. These days I expect to pay $100 for dinner at most of the restaurants.

Alison: Are drinks usually included?

Robert: Never.

Alison: Never. [laughs]

Robert: One of the angles that the restaurants are playing is that you like to drink and you'll go in there and spend a bargain $45 on a good dinner involving three courses, but you'll also have to wash it down with three or four drinks. In that case, they're going to make a decent profit.

Alison: What about weekends? Is this a weekend-available thing? A lot of people are working during the week and can't really get out.

Robert: That's a shame too. You got to keep in mind that the whole purpose of this is to bring people into restaurants at less than peak times. All of the restaurants have something Monday through Friday. All of them are blacked out on Saturday, so you can't eat on Saturday. Some do Sunday dinner, and a few actually do a decent Sunday brunch. Once again, you're going to have to do a little research, unless you already have a place in mind that you love and you'll just go there anyway.

Alison: Final question before we get into your list, can you stroll on in or is it best to make a resi?

Robert: It's best to make a reservation unless exactly how big the place is and how often it's full. Definitely make a reservation. I think most of them are available through OpenTable. There are links right on the city website the Tourism Authority website.

Alison: My guest is Robert Sietsema, senior critic at Eater NY. We are talking about Restaurant Week. Robert has put together a list of 10 tables worth booking for New York City Restaurant Week. We want to hear from you, are you looking forward to Restaurant Week, is there a deal that you've seen that you think is great and you want to share, what restaurants would you recommend, where do you want to go and try out? 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. As some calls start coming in, let's go to your list, Robert. We're going to go in alphabetical order, we decided.

First up is Boqueria, a tapas restaurant on 53 West 19th Street. I love that place. You're getting a $45 lunch or dinner with four courses. I Boqueria. What do you like about it?

Robert: What I like is when it first opened in 2006, it really had a Barcelona-type flare. Most of our Spanish restaurants are these crusty old-timers that date from the time of the Spanish Revolution. They're great of course, but they're serving up paella and stuff like that. Whereas Boqueria was going after the tapas.

The tapas, they really were one of the first places to make tapas popular. A style of dining that's been adopted all over the city. I love that place. There's actually three branches currently open. The SoHo branch is not open, but you could be in the Upper East Side or in the Flatiron District and you could go to one of those Boquerias.

Alison: Is there anything on the menu you particularly like?

Robert: I would say the garlic shrimp. I actually like the paella. I love the charcuterie and cheeses. You could make a meal just of those. I don't have the actual menu right in front of me at the moment or I would make some exact recommendations.

Alison: That is Boqueria. Let's talk about Boulud Sud. It's at Lincoln Center. If you're around that area, it's Daniel Boulud's restaurant at 20 West 64th Street, and it's offering a three-course dinner for $60 a person. This might sound like a naive question. That sounds like a good deal for a Daniel Boulud restaurant.

Robert: It is indeed. The chef there is Christina D'Angelo. Whereas most of his restaurants concentrate more on French food, this one is all Mediterranean rems. You can go there and find a North African dish, a Moroccan dish, a French dish, a Spanish dish, a dish from Sicily. It has a lot of choices and a lot of sunny choices, bright flavors. It's a good place. It's a sleeper too. Because it's on a side street, it's not as popular as some of his other restaurants that are even closer to Lincoln Center.

Alison: I'm going to read three things that you can get and I want to know which one you think sounds great. Ricotta Cavatelli, slow-baked Merlu, or braised Lamb shoulder. For this particular restaurant, which one would you choose?

Robert: I would do the lamb shoulder any day of the week. Lamb and goat even more so are in very short supply on upscale restaurant menus and this sounds good. I'm not sure exactly how they're doing it, but if you eat meat, try the lamb. Chances are they're sourcing the lamb at someplace that actually has flavorful lamb, so you'll be able to distinguish it from beef.

Alison: Vegetarians, our apologies. For our next selection we're headed to Brooklyn to a restaurant called Indian Table in Cobble Hill at 234 Court Street. Offering a $45 dinner that they're calling a tribute to Parsi Cuisine. What sets this restaurant apart for you?

Robert: God, I love this restaurant. One of the most exciting stories of the last decade has been the appearance of all sorts of regional Indian restaurants that are serving-- There have to be at least 100 distinct cuisines in India. This one is from Chef Eric McCarthy, who despite the Irish-sounding name actually was born in Goa and is Indian. He begins with the Food of Goa, which has all sorts of Portuguese touches to it, and he goes to Hyderabad, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and other southern places.

What's so unique, and I don't mean to sound too excited, but I'm actually going to this place myself for Restaurant Week, is that he's doing a Parsi menu, which is a menu from people that migrated from Iran, from Persia in medieval times and have established their own distinct cultures. Dhansak, which is lamb or chicken cooked with lentils is one of their signature dishes. He's going out on a limb and just serving this purely Parsi menu. You go there and you're trying something that's new to the chef too. I love it when chefs stick their noses out and do something different and that's one of the most exciting things about Restaurant Week is chefs going out in the limb.

Alison: My guest is Robert Sietsema a senior critic at Eater New York. We're talking about 10 tables worth booking for New York City Restaurant Week. Up next is an Oaxaca restaurant at 199 Bowery in the East Village. Lunch for $30, $60 for dinner, $45 for brunch. Now you call this place a clubstaurant.

Robert: It's not exactly a new category. We had it as long as 20 years ago when Tao opened up. It's a restaurant that wishes that we're a nightclub and as a result, there's a high volume of music and the place is really decorated. It's like a scene from something from Ricky Ricardo. It's a place that's stylish and urban and noisy and looks like a nightclub, so that said the Oaxacan food is absolutely fantastic. You find a lot of the moles that are becoming so popular right now in Oaxacan restaurants or so many of us have actually traveled to Oaxaca and checked out the cuisine there, which is quite different maybe from the Mexican food you're accustomed to.

Alison: How do you say the name again?

Robert: I think it's Ixta, I-X-T-A.

Alison: Ixta on Bowery. We've got Jack from Astoria Queens, who wants to shout out a Queens restaurant. He says there are some on the list. Hey, Jack, are you there?

Jack: Plenty of restaurants-

Alison: Yes, go for it.

Jack: -in Astoria, we're going Friday night to Hoja Santa on 30th Avenue, 42nd--

Robert: Oh, yes. Excellent. Mexican restaurant.

Jack: 30th Avenue. There's a-- I just googled, I took issue with what you said about you're out of luck of here in Queens for Restaurant Week. There are nine places right here that I could shout out, but the writer of a Queen's local paper, local magazine, and she's got like nine places. Some of them are in Forest Hills, some of them are in New Side and just in general Astoria is an amazing place for all kinds of eateries, up and down 30th Avenue, Broadway, 31st Avenue. You should really come out here and check it out.

Robert: Nobody loves Queens restaurants more than me and I write about them all the time, but you got to admit nine restaurants out of over 500 is a pretty small proportion given how gigantic queens is.

Alison: If you want to shout at a restaurant that you are going to for Restaurant Week or a deal you've seen that you love, 212- 433-969-221- 2433 WNYC. This is so funny. As we were talking about Indian Table, Robert, somebody Instagram messages on Instagram about it and how much they liked it. Rich and spices and very savory perfect for the cold month, so we got a second on that one. Lafayette is on your list, a French restaurant located at 380 Lafayette Street offering $60 a person prefixed for hors d'oeuvres, entrees, and dessert. This place is so pretty, I think it's just a beautiful room. When you think about what they do well in terms of food, what did they do?

Robert: The thing that I like the most about them is that they have their own bakery on the premises, so almost every great meal has bread in it somewhere and the bread there is great, the pastries are great. The French food is exactly what you expect from French food, which is brazes and fried French fries and steaks and fish and there's something there for everyone. If you bring your persnickety grandfather or child who doesn't know what they want to eat, you can find something that they'll like there, there's no question about it.

Alison: If they have this attached bakery, is that a sign that the desserts are going to be really good?

Robert: Absolutely, so many places these days serve a perfunctory list of desserts. Many restaurants have done away with their pastry chefs, so you often have like three dessert choices trucked in, but not so at Lafayette where there's just an amazing dessert list and it's baked right in the premises.

Alison: Next up you have Morandi in the West Village. It's a Keith McNally restaurant focusing on Italian food. They make a great cappuccino, by the way, 211 Waverly Place lunch for $30, $60 for dinner. When you think about the Keith McNally empire, you think about Balthazar, or something like that in terms of-- I know Balthazar is French and Randy.

Robert: Not to mention his crazy Instagram posts.

Alison: Yes. That's a whole other segment. When you think about, how does Morandi compare to some place, if you've been to Balthazar and you like it or don't like it?

Robert: I think even though the food is Italian rather than French, the approach is similar. The thing is Balthazar is so difficult to get into and that's another place with a bakery attached, by the way. Balthazar is an Englishman taking a look at Italian food, which is the same case as the famous River Cafe in London. The English do Italian food quite well and this place is unique in that it's not crowded part of the time and it has a lovely outdoor seating area. Of course, it's in the middle of the West Village, which is-- a lot of people want to eat in the West Village, it's a handsome neighborhood with a European feel itself. They focus on pastas, which everybody wants to do in an Italian restaurant, so it started out as a sleeper and I didn't like it very much, I've gone in the last year and loved it.

Alison: Let's take Nicole and Cue Gardens. Hi Nicole. What's your shout-out?

Nicole: Hi, thanks for taking my call. Long-time listener and not a first-time caller, sorry, wanting to say that my son's best friend, his parents own a restaurant in Astoria. It's called [unintelligible 00:17:06] it's called Sac for short, ACS place and it's in Astoria, right next to Kaufman's Studios and by the Museum of the Moving Image. I just wanted to shout them out because they have some of the best pizza you'll ever taste and the noogichi that they make, everything is made by hand and many much of their produce is from their house in the Poconos, so it's like super fresh and delicious and so I just wanted to shout out their restaurant.

Alison: Awesome. Thanks for calling.

Robert: Thanks. I'll put it on my list.

Alison: Let's talk about Sylvia's in Harlem. Oh, Sylvia's been around for so long. How has the food stayed consistent? Is it--

Robert: All I can say is that there are talented cooks up there who know the tradition that she comes from, which originated in the Southern part of the United States, migrated up to New York City in the 1920s and consists of dishes so persuasive that they've taken over the popular imagination, like look at fried chicken. Sylvia's does it fantastically, Sylvia Woods, of course, herself died a few years back, but they managed it's an institution. Some would call it a tourist trap, but my experience is that you can get a reservation there and the food is always top-notch.

Alison: You've got Perry Street on Perry Street. Victor's a classic Cuban restaurant from the West side has been around forever as well, but I did want to shout out Taine and Bay Ridge located at 7523 third Avenue. What will I find there?

Robert: Middle Eastern food and specifically Palestinian food. It started out as like a little deli that I used to go to like 20 years ago where you just have these carry-out Middle Eastern masa salads and then it became popular and turned into an elegant restaurant. I love the one that happens and it's a nice place to dine, it's fun. The food is not just the usual kebabs and falafels, it has a lot of interesting homestyle dishes featuring lamb and rice and slivered almonds and things like that and a lot of flavors and not exactly what you would expect in the Middle Eastern restaurant.

Alison: You should check out 10 tables worth booking for New York City Restaurant Week. It is by senior critic at Eater New York. Robert Sietsema, thank you so much for being with us and for making that list.

Robert: Thanks for having me on, Alison, I had a great time.

Alison: That is all of it for today. I'm Alison Stewart, I appreciate you listening and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here next time.

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