Lets admit it, hotel restaurants are not that exciting. Beautiful dining rooms are usually met with apathetic staff and mediocre to sub-par food. Fine silverware is matched with bright white, stylish dinnerware, that serves as a vessel for food that does not have much thought or care put into it.
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| Ellabess dining room |
Walking into
Ellabess you can't help but feel this is going to be one more of those experiences. Ellabess is housed in the corner of the Nolitan Hotel. Like many hotel restaurants, the dining room is sleek and chic. The 70-seat dining room sits just below street level, with two walls of high glass windows allowing an incredible amount of natural light in, and in return allows diners to check out the bustling Nolitan neighborhood outside. The dining room is set in oak, with Austrian oak floors, and custom-made oak tables and chairs. A high marble-countered bar sits along the back of the room.
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| The incredible house-made rolls |
At first bite, however, your stereotypes of what hotel restaurants should be are thrown right out the window. Ellabess is brought to you by Epicurean Management, the same company that created West Village favorites Dell-anima, Anfora, and L'artusi. With their newest venture, Ellabess, you realize very quickly they're doing some serious food here.
The kitchen is run by Executive Chef Troy Unruh, who was most recently the Chef de Cuisine at Dell-anima, as well as a veteran of Del Posto. The Executive Sous-Chef is Ty Kotz, the former Chef de Cuisine at Tabla right before the closing of the restaurant back in December. Also from Tabla is the Executive Pastry Chef Carmine Arroyo, who was the former pastry Sous Chef up until the closing. The incredible talent in the kitchen translates heavily into the food, making for an overall wonderful and unforgettable experience.
The menu is small, but well put together, offering a little bit of everything from market salads, crab salads, chilled pea soup, to sweetbreads, quail, pork tenderloin, and even fried chicken. While looking over the menu the first bite of the house-made rolls will make you swoon and transport you to a happier place. They are warm, buttery, soft, and flavorful. Reminiscent of your favorite biscuit without the hard texture.
When some people mention restaurants can be located "off the beaten path", no restaurant is more deserving of this title than Riverpark. Riverpark is located on the first floor of The Alexandria Center, a medical building living on the far side of a gated, security guard watched, community in-between Bellevue Medical Center and NYU Medical. Walking up 29th Street and eventually to 1st Avenue you can't help but seem reluctant to walk through the large iron gates to find your destination. Confused and bewildered, the security guard looks at you and says "Don't worry, you're in the right place. Just keep walking". I guess he has become accustomed to not even asking where people are going. 
