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It’s close to midnight. You’re stepping out of a Broadway theater and into the neon hellscape of Times Square. You’re hungry, and too dignified (and/or sober) to wait two hours for a slice of Joe’s Pizza. The Olive Garden, Hard Rock Cafe, and Margaritaville don’t enthrall you, despite their ability to seduce out-of-town masses. The Rum House, a perpetually mobbed piano bar, will require you to beg and bribe your way in. What’s a patron of the Midtown-based arts to do?
We say make a beeline for Grand Central Station. No, you’re not fleeing, you’re dining. Admittedly, most of the city’s major transit hubs are not places where one would dine by choice. And yet, this 1913 Beaux Arts architectural masterpiece is home to two very good restaurants.
It’s too late in the evening to visit the century-old Grand Central Oyster Bar, but you’re just in time for dinner at Grand Brasserie. This 400-cover, 16,000-square-foot restaurant opened in 2024, but you’d swear it had always been here. Situated under the cavernous, chandeliered ceilings of Vanderbilt Hall, this classically French restaurant is open 5:30 a.m. to 2 a.m., seven days a week, and the kitchen stays open right until the bitter end.
Given that 750,000-odd souls pass through this hall on a daily basis, Grand Brasserie could easily have coasted on location and looks alone, which makes its food as much of a surprise as it is a delight. The menu of bistro heavy-hitters by chef Guillaume Thivetwhich encourages cosplaying life in the Gilded Age, and we’d recommend the leeks vinaigrette, crab persillade, and skirt steak au poivre to help get you in character.
If you’re hoping to play robber baron for an hour or so (we encourage this wholeheartedly), get the lobster frites. It comes bathed in shamrock-hued persillade butter and cleaved in two, the claw meat removed so that aspiring aristocrats need not dirty their fingers. Two hungry diners could easily split it, particularly if you dunk the accompanying crisp, slender fries in said butter. It’s a fittingly decadent way to leave New York, or just to pretend you live in a different version of it.