I had made a 6pm reservation for dinner with a female friend before our Summer for the City at Lincoln Center Festival Orchestra show. Our show was at 7:30pm, so I knew we were going to be tight on time for dinner given we would be about a 13-minute walk from David Geffen Hall. I arrived about two minutes before 6pm and checked in with the hostess, who asked me if I’d like to be seated at the table to wait for my friend. I perked up: wait, what? She was actually going to seat me before my “whole party was present”? I was already pleasantly surprised by this given that at most Manhattan restaurants, especially ones as new and trendy as this one, they refuse to seat you until your whole party was present. I got seated, and my friend came about two minutes later.

When our server came, he checked in to see if we wanted to order drinks. We said we needed a few minutes to review the menu. And unlike at other new, trendy Manhattan restaurants, he didn’t come check on us until we asked him to come over. We put in our full order, including drinks. They spaced out our starter from our mains. They didn’t bring my friend her drink until the food arrived, just as she requested. Our server came by and checked on us just once to see that the food and drinks were to our liking. The service was attentive without hovering, and they were not even remotely pushy to get us in and out at all. We had to cut our meal short given tight time to walk to Lincoln Center for our show, but I was just so surprised by how good the service was and how I never felt rushed at all.

Plus, the food was delicious. We ate at BKK, a “Bangkok meets New York” style fusion restaurant that had opened just a few months ago. Our drinks were perfect and well made. The papaya salad was truly “Thai spicy” as we asked for, and as the server and staff complied with. We shared two mains: the crab fried rice and the “brisket kee mao.” The crab tasted like it was freshly plucked out of the shell, and the brisket, so a fancy version of pad kee mao, was melt-in-your-mouth tender. Of course, the prices were elevated given the trendiness of the restaurant plus the location, but given the freshness of the food and the flavors, I think it was most definitely worth it.

Now, why can’t all post-pandemic Manhattan dining experiences be like this? After more than a handful of rushed experiences with servers who have put really obvious pressure on my dining partner (usually a female friend) to order, eat, and get the hell out while at many new-ish, trendy restaurants in Manhattan, this was a truly positive and delightful dining experience, especially given the location in midtown.