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America’s top 10 romantic restaurants
Where to go for the dazzle and the glow
 | A restaurant Gershwin might have used to inspire him to write “Rhapsody in Blue,” River Café’s view of the Manhattan cityscape and its rep for fine cuisine goes back to 1977. |
The River Café |
According to Rodgers and Hart:
My romance doesn’t have to have a moon in the sky
My romance doesn’t need a blue lagoon standing by
No month of May, no twinkling stars
No hideaway, no soft guitars.
Lovely lyrics, but let’s face it, dinner with fine Champagne gains measurably in the romance department when you add in the moon, a lagoon and starlight.
Still, the idea of a romantic dinner has changed over the last few decades; at the very least it’s become more casual and more dependent on landscape than interior design, although the two are not mutually exclusive.
Here’s a rule: The food must be at least the equal of the atmosphere, whether it’s a table at New York’s River Café, with its spectacular view of the Manhattan skyline, or at the ultra-posh Alex in Wynn Las Vegas.
Since opening in 1977, The River Café in Brooklyn has been just as renowned for its food and winelist as for its panorama on the East River, and I suspect more marriage proposals have been made at a window table here over the chocolate marquise Brooklyn Bridge dessert (which just might conceal a diamond ring) than anywhere in America.
Indoor elegance
At Alex, with two Michelin stars, the romance is all indoors, down a grand staircase, leading to a drop-dead-gorgeous dining room lit by chandeliers, draped with silks and satins, and set with the finest linens and silverware. It's a place for a dramatic entrance, and for the superb and sumptuous cuisine of Chef Alessandro Stratta, like his Wagyu beef with caramelized onion custard, Black Mission figs, and red wine sauce.
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The Brown Hotel With its lovely wood-paneling and stained glass windows and a menu that reflects modern American and European cuisine with flair, the English Grill has for decades been the place to propose or to celebrate an anniversary. |
Atmospheric conditions
Restaurants that take full advantage of their setting while seeming to be a significant part of it create a romantic atmosphere by allowing Nature to work its wiles. This is clearly the case at Azul in Miami, which has a wrap-around view of the sparkling blue ocean waters, soaking up the extraordinary Florida sunlight during the day and the soft rainbow colors of sunset at dinner.
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The menu at Azul partakes of both the bounty of seafood from the Gulf and ideas and ingredients from the Orient, in sensual dishes like “A Study in Tuna,” with crabmeat, tempura avocado, caviar, and Asians seasonings, and a “Rainbow of Oysters,” wrapped in beef, tuna, salmon and hamachi carpaccios.
In the brand new Encantado Resort in Tesuque, ten miles outside of Santa Fe, the stone-marble-wood dressed restaurant Terra has been impeccably fit into the desert landscape so that it takes full romantic advantage of the sunsets over the majestic mesas and mountains. The view alone will take your breath away, but so will Chef Charles, with dishes like ravioli stuffed with greens and graced with a pistachio pesto in a tomato broth. There is whimsy here too, as with his quickly seared foie gras with a duck tamale splashed with a cherry Coke sauce.
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