Citizens' Committee to Study Mid-Priced Restaurants on the Upper West Side

Given the CCSMPRUWS’s inability to act in the absence of my guidance, I have take the liberty of defining our study area and proposing an additional six research projects, as noted on linked-to map. For the purpose of simplicity, the study area has been generously defined to include all of Manhattan that is west of Central Park and between 57th Street and 110th Street, despite possible objections from purists who would exclude Lincoln Square, which is bounded by 72ndto the north, or Manhattan Valley, which is bounded by 96th Street in the south and Broadway to the west.

A suitable restaurant should be defined as one that:

• Is located within the study area (as defined above)
• Has an average entree price that is equal to or less than $16
• Either provides of accepts alcohol
• Can accommodate the CCSMPRUWS in comfort

Exceptions are of course permissible and encouraged, pending the approval of the CCSMPRUWS.

A task force of the Committee convened on the evening of Thursday, 20 December.  Mr. Benthall took down, and is in possession of, the meeting’s minutes; I shall not presume to write without his notes about the restaurant we studied, but rest assured that the full Committee and our loyal readers will shortly be informed of the task force’s findings.

Last week’s meeting had a slightly different purpose from our first meeting, where Committee members Benthall, Penate, and myself met specifically to study Silk Road Palace.  Instead, this time, a group of five (Committee members Benthall, Lence, Hammel, David and myself) met up at the Fairway on Broadway and 74th and set out to find a mid-priced restaurant to study.  Though the task force members were tired, ravenous and notoriously incapable of making simple decisions like where to eat, we assumed that it would be a simple task to quickly find a suitable eatery: after all, the neighbourhood is teeming with mid-priced restaurants.  Surely, we reasoned, we would find ourselves seated somewhere within ten minutes, happily ensconcing ourselves away from the overwhelming grime of the Upper West Side’s filthy streets.

Not so, friends; not so.  Heavy with hunger, the task force trundled nearly twenty blocks up Broadway, turned east to Columbus Ave, south several blocks and finally back west to Amsterdam before finding a single restaurant that we unanimously agreed fit the Committee’s stated areas of concern.

Needless to say, this raises alarming questions for the Committee.  Where are the Upper West Side’s fabled hordes of mid-priced restaurants?  Perhaps our informal criteria are too strict or altogether misguided?  In the coming weeks I believe the Committee should hold extensive discussions to hammer out the precise qualifications for a restaurant’s inclusion in our scope, to allow for a more scientific approach to our studies and, hopefully, prevent a repetition of last Thursday’s troubling incident.