Distrikt Hotel Blog - New York City

Thanks for sharing with us, Paul!

Last week we celebrated The Fashion Center’s Art Festival by presenting local artist, Xin Song’s works in our Collage Bar & Bistro. Joining for our festivities were the ever-popular Rickshaw Dumpling Truck and People’s Pops who provided boozy shaved-ice. The event was a massive success and a lot of fun! Check out some photos from the night.

There she is! This is artist, Xin Song.

Freaky Friday! Who’s serving who??

by Anna S.

Every year The Fashion Center presents the Fashion District Art Festival, which includes a walk through local businesses presenting local artists. This year we’ve teamed up with Xin Song (that’s pronounced SHin Song), a visual artist originally from Beijing, now based right here in NYC. She had a busy year and she has even more projects coming up, so we’re thrilled to showcase some of her work in our Collage Bar & Bistro starting Thursday, October 18th. I visited Xin’s studio here in Midtown to chat about her work and her vision!

After the Fashion Walk at Collage Bistro, Xin’s work will be showcased next at the Flatiron Building’s ground floor looking out onto the intersection of Broadway and 23rd Street. Go check out her work starting November, then grab some Shake Shack burgers in Madison Square Park across the street!

New York City is constantly full of free or cheap things to do, including countless festivals. Festivals dedicated to… hot chocolate? Movies about food? Female comedians? Check, check, check.

This weekend we checked out two very different but very “New York” festivals.

On Saturday, I headed to All For One Festival, a festival presenting only solo theater pieces. As an avid theatergoer appreciative of many genres I have seen very exciting solo shows in the past, so I was looking forward to this festival especially since I had never been to the legendary off-Broadway theater, Cherry Lane Theater in the West Village. The West Village is a wonderful neighborhood full of local characters, and I even spotted a man walking his goat.

I attended one of the All For One panels where they brought in industry professionals (for example, the founder of the New York International Fringe Festival, a prestigious, annual theater festival held every August right here in NYC) to discuss the process of how a piece goes from being submitted to a festival to being realized on stage. This invaluable panel for those interested in New York theater was presented for a mere suggested donation of $5! New York City is full of priceless opportunities (often for cheap of free) to gain intimate access to working professionals in whatever industry you prefer.

 Festival workers prepare programs for the evening’s performances.

On Sunday, we headed to the Dumbo Arts Festival in DUMBO, Brooklyn. Dumbo has been a long time favorite of locals, offering beautiful parks and cute cafes and restaurants overlooking the famous Manhattan skyline. Even with the drizzle, Dumbo Arts Festival was packed! Local artists showcased their work, many of them interactive, and visitors got to vote for their favorite artist. (I wonder who won?) Check out some of these photos from DAF!

Check out the coolest NYC music video we discovered. Featuring many locals (and local celebrities), you’ll be sure to recognize many if not all of the neighborhoods and landmarks! Tell us what you think.

By now you know how we love our food trucks. We’ve tried Mexican, grilled cheese, pastries, and so forth. This time to kick off fall properly, we invited Coolhaus to share with our guests and team their signature custom ice cream sandwiches! If you haven’t heard of them yet, you will soon, because Coolhaus trucks are now in New York City, as well as Austin, Dallas, LA and Miami. Guests chose their own combination of unique cookies and ice cream (some of us got a little creative and had two cookies and two ice creams!), including Bourbon and Candied Bacon ice cream (!) and Fried Chicken and Waffles ice cream (!!). Check out some fun photos!

This wrapper is actually edible! (It’s wafer. Clever, huh?)

Rumor spread throughout Distrikt about the yummy ice cream sandwiches, and soon the line was huge!

Some messy guests ordered them in cups instead

If you’ve ever made use of the NYC subway system, or mass transit in any major city, you know that Tom Sessler’s depictions of the sights and sounds are spot on.  Here, he spent just a few hours of filming to capture the true day to day on-goings of NYC’s underbelly. Take a look!

As part of our quest to discover great restaurants participating in Restaurant Week this month (after our lovely visit to A Voce: http://www.nycstooptalk.com/?p=1090) we next ventured to Atlantic Grill on 64th Street and Broadway, just across the street from Lincoln Center. We had very high hopes as their Restaurant Week menu looked terrific and some of us are major seafood advocates. As with most restaurants in the Lincoln Center area, Atlantic Grill had a conservative, upscale look from the outside (which often reflects on the pricing as well, exactly why Restaurant Week is such a great deal!).

As we stepped inside, the Maitre’ D, a courteous and tall gentleman, immediately sat us at our table. The decor also caught our attention immediately, as it expressed much identity crisis. The decor was modern, sleek, and stylishly offered a glimpse of local history (i.e. see below a framed photo of dancers from the School of American Ballet, which is part of Lincoln Center), but there was also a massive TV at the bar (read: trashy sports bar, at least for me), shiny wooden paneling covering the former tin ceiling (I am biased towards the 19th-Century charm of the latter), white table cloths (which would go better with a tin ceiling),  and a silver sushi bar counter lit in blue like a Miami nightclub. I wasn’t sure what exactly Atlantic Grill wanted to be.

Our server Tai was friendly, and did not fail to mention the “National Tequila Day” special, a peach tequila cocktail (below). We also ordered a fresh coconut water-rum-vodka cocktail. As a seafood restaurant, they have some cold sake on their spirit menu as well.

From the Restaurant Week menu we ordered:

Appetizers:

Summer red plum & watermelon gazpacho

Marinated salmon tacos

Spicy crab maki roll

Entrees:

Grilled rainbow trout

Pepper seared filet mignon

Maine lobster roll

Desserts:

Triple chocolate torte (I tried convincing our server that I was European and it is pronounced torté, both false)

Strawberry shortcake

All in all, we felt the food was mediocre. It was an average, forgettable experience. The few things I do remember was the strawberry shortcake (but it’s probably not a great thing that the whipped cream was more memorable than their fish), and my rainbow trout, because it felt over-grilled, in fact burnt.  If you are looking for a special dining experience nearby Lincoln Center, we would suggest to look elsewhere.

Aftermath of my maki dish:

 Maine Lobster Roll

Grilled rainbow trout

Pepper seared filet mignon

Strawberry shortcake

Triple chocolate torte