Monday, February 17, 2025
Sunny. High 33 degrees.
Temperatures will remain cold this week, sitting between 15 and 39 degrees, with no expected snowfall.
Notices
Our calendar has lots of local events. Click on the link or the lady in the upper righthand corner to check.
Monday is Presidents Day.
Upper West Side Councilmember Gale Brewer is hosting her Town Hall for the district on Monday, February 24, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Society for Ethical Culture, 2 West 64th Street. The event will include elected officials and representatives from the Upper West Side community board and city agencies. Residents should bring their questions, and there is no RSVP required.
A special guest for the night will be jazz great Wynton Marsalis, managing and artistic director of the Upper West Side’s Jazz at Lincoln Center.
“I invited him because I love him and have known him for a long time,” Brewer told West Side Rag. “He used to play basketball with his son at Amsterdam Houses. He does a lot for the neighborhood.”
When asked if Marsalis would perform at the meeting, Brewer said, “I don’t know. Sometimes he brings his horn.”
Upper West Side News
By Gus Saltonstall
Many publications have tried their hand at naming the best restaurants on the Upper West Side. Last week, fashion and lifestyle magazine Vogue took its shot at naming the best eateries in the neighborhood.
“It’s a place where brownstones are lined with dog-walkers and stroller-pushing parents, where pre-war apartment buildings house artists and academics, and where a certain kind of old-school New Yorker still clings to their rent-controlled one-bedroom with a near-religious devotion,” Vogue wrote. “In a city that often seems to reinvent itself overnight, the Upper West Side stands as a reminder that some things—especially a perfect pastrami sandwich or a well-shaken martini—are best left exactly as they are.”
Here are the local restaurants that earned a spot on the Vogue ranking.
- Cafe Luxembourg
- Tatiana by Kwame Onwuachi
- Barney Greengrass
- The Leopard at des Artistes
- Lincoln Ristorante
- Zabar’s
- Cafe Fiorello
- Salumeria Rosi
- Nice Matin
- Dagon
- The Milling Room
The 11-restaurant list has a few Upper West Side staples such as Cafe Luxembourg, Barney Greengrass, and Zabar’s, while also including newer popular eateries such as Tatiana by Kwame Onwuachi and Dagon.
You can check out the full list and breakdown of each Upper West Side restaurant — HERE.
A Navy Seal who says he killed Osama Bin Laden will sell his branded marijuana on the Upper West Side, as first reported by the New York Post.
Robert O’Neill, a former Navy SEAL who says he is the gunman who shot and killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, recently started his own cannabis brand called Operator Canna Co. The brand, which grows its marijuana in upstate New York, will soon sell its product exclusively in The Flowery dispensary locations across the city, which includes the recently opened outpost on the Upper West Side, reported the Post.
“I wanted to get into the cannabis business through my experience in the military and watching vets suffer from things like post-traumatic stress disorder,” O’Neill told the publication. “It’s a good way to take the edge off. It helps to get rid of the noise.” A portion of all revenue will go toward charity for military veterans, O’Neill said.
The company’s cannabis strain names include “Shooter-Hybrid” and “Warrior-Sativa.” You can read the full story — HERE.
“For me, New York’s most iconic architectural landmark is Lincoln Center,” reads the first paragraph of Town & Country writer Leena Kim’s recent piece, “A Love Letter to Lincoln Center.”
The story is an ode to Lincoln Center on the Upper West Side. It describes how Kim cherished her visits to the cultural hub as a child growing up in New Jersey, in the same way that she did on her daily walks through its campus during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We often love what we love simply because of the way it makes us feel, whether it’s because it delights our senses, or triggers dormant emotions, or provides solace during difficult times,” Kim writes. “Lincoln Center checks those boxes: it isn’t just a grand symbol of New York’s cultural evolution, it’s also a sacred space that holds so many personal memories.”
The piece also reminds readers that there were huge questions about Lincoln Center at the time of its construction, including in another Town & Country article from 1960 that featured the headline, “Is Lincoln Center a Flop?” The earlier story posed the question: would Lincoln Center “turn out to be a priceless addition to New York’s cultural life or a $150,000,000 blunder?”
You can read the full love letter to Lincoln Center, HERE.
Let us know in the comments your favorite architectural site in New York City, whether it is on the Upper West Side or somewhere else in the five boroughs.
Subscribe to West Side Rag’s FREE email newsletter here. And you can Support the Rag here.
It is amazing how wrong reporters can get things:
“the Upper West Side has remained home to institutions that have fed generations—………and The Leopard at des Artistes, where the walls whisper stories of a bygone New York through Howard Chandler Christy’s ethereal murals.”
Café des Artistes was open for close to 100 years. before The Leopard which has been around for about 10 and has never been able to capture the same vibe. A French couple, Joe and Marie, ran it for years before George Lang took it over. It was a neighborhood gem catering to celebrities and residents with a legendary bar scene. Hiran Pagan was named the best waiter in NYC by Esquire and worked their for 50 years including taking care of my brother and I when my parents would send us there for dinner while they went out. So many stories there including the theft of a number of the Christy murals ( that he painted for his meals). A real piece of NYC history was lost when it closed and the Leopard never measured up in any way let alone “feeding generations”.
How can you steal a mural? It’s painted on the wall.
They were on some type of canvas applied to the walls. A couple of the panels were removed at some point in a disute adnd were replaced with mirrors.
I miss Cafe des Artiste. I was so sad when it closed.
Come on. The food at Nice Matin is objectively awful.
Ha. I’ve only eaten there a few times (brunch) and it certainly seemed fresh and pretty solid, if not exactly creative and visionary.
It is NOT!
We don’t need any more pot stores on the UWS.
West 72nd st. Dispensary has one person working behind the counter, the lines are to the door, there is no one to give information, and one customer can take 10 minutes to get the product and check out.
I don’t understand how Elea missed the cut! One of the best restaurants hands down.
Mediocre and way overpriced, thank you.
I second Elea as one of the top ten, I would even say one of the top three.
Zabars is not on Amsterdam Avenue. It is on Broadway/80th
Sorry, WSR, but the reply button now seems to be broken on desktop (Windows 11, Firefox) as well. Thanks to Bill Williams for correcting the Leopard citation. Cafe des Artistes was a place that reflected the warmth, neighborliness and cultural traditions of the USW. The Leopard is just a restaurant.
If it’s at the Flowery it’ll be much higher priced than other dispensaries nearby. It’s all the same product.
Since when is Zabar’s a restaurant?
They do have a little cafe but I’m with you. Certainly wouldn’t qualify in my book. This seems like a fair amount of pandering to me.
Surprised that Tavern on the Green was left off this list. Two guys from Philly took it over a decade ago, and the quality of cuisine makes it a gem on the UWS. The great service and incomparable setting add to its magic. Also, Felice deserves a mention.
TotG ambiance is stellar but I’ve never been impressed by the food.
Felice is great but as a local chain I’m not sure it qualifies.
My husband and I ate at Cafe des Artistes often and thoroughly enjoyed the experience that was the place every time. We had a drink at the bar, oysters, maybe a boiled egg, before sitting at our table. I remember the days when u couldn’t smoke in the restaurant but you could smoke in the bar haha ! We got married in Stowe VT and celebrated the three days that we were there. When we returned to the city we had our last celebratory gathering at Cafe des Artistes with family and friends that were not able to make it to Stowe. Walking home my husband said everything tonight was perfect. When Cafe des artistes closed, we like Kim, were also sooo sad.
Seems like Vogue barely left the Lincoln Center area and isn’t really keyed into the scene. Replace Nice Matin with Bar Boulud, Milling Room with Essential and Cafe Fiorello with Rampoldi and then you have a better list.
Last few visits to Bar Boulud have made me think it is going downhill. Agree on the others.
Nice Matin : mediocre at best.
Zabar’s has a restaurant? Since when?
Zero Dank Thirty
Amelie is by far the best French spot on the UWS. The WS Rag should do a profile on this wonderful bistro. It is now adjacent to a construction site (Amsterdam between 87/88) and needs some love!
The Milling Room……ha ha ha ha
Not Bar Boulud? Yes Nice Matin? Impossible.
As soon as I saw Barney Greengrass I thought, forget this list. It’s awful, and not just the waitstaff.
At the risk of being one of the many who predictably disagrees with EVERY best of list … no Jacob’s Pickles?
I got engaged at Café des Artistes, got married at Tavern on the Green, and then moved to West 66th St. When I read on the same day in 2009 that the Café was closing and the Tavern was filing for bankruptcy, it felt like my touchpoints were ending. I’m so glad new owners took over both places and that they have survived. I wish my husband had survived, too.
Bustan!
Completely agree! Bustan is an underappreciated gem! Another great one is Leyla on W 74th.
Bustan rocks – I wish they opened earlier than 5 on the weekends!
There’s no way the Vogue reporter visited those restaurants, or any others on the UWS. If she actually got out from behind her computer and visited those places, rather than looking at their websites, she would certainly know that Zabar’s is on Broadway, that Dagon is the furthest thing from bright and airy, and that the take out section of Zabar’s is hardly a restaurant. And that Nice Matin is meh at best. Shoddy reporting.