At New York’s highest Midtown restaurant, the best dish is vegan
The waiter had persuaded us to get the tuna. It’s understandable. We’ve all spent our lives being conditioned that meat and fish is best. But at Midtown New York’s highest restaurant, the vegan food shouts loudest.
Peak restaurant opened during the pandemic on the 101st floor of 30 Hudson Yards, the tallest building within New York’s new Hudson Yards development, Manhattan’s polished new business district. Whisper it, but exiting the new Subway station into Hudson Yards feels like entering Canary Wharf: ubiquitous-feeling skyscrapers and not a whole lot of greenery because, well, there’s a severe lack of space on Manhattan.
After four suicides closed the Vessel, the flagship architectural piece at New York’s Hudson Yards shaped something like a beehive, the major tourist attraction is up high. The Edge viewing platform gets most of the press, with incredible views from the 100th floor of 30 Hudson Yards, but it’s the restaurant at the very top at 1,149 feet that’s worth booking.
Read more: Cycling New York’s wild, intriguing Hudson River cycling routes
Like at London’s Shard, it makes economic sense to skip booking a ticket to the viewing platform at the Edge and book a table at Peak restaurant instead. Bookings are free, and tables are available for dinner or drinks, and the food and drink is very good. You also skip the lift queues to get up and down, ascending and descending quickly, without tourists, which is pretty convenient after eating fistfuls of cheese.
There is an entrée of sweet potato that is memorable and different. It comes with big, earthy chunks of beetroot, and is dressed with cabbage, shiitake mushroom and Carolina Rice. Marmite is mixed in to ramp up the umami. It keeps revealing new depths of flavour, and is comforting and filling as well as fun, and one of the most interesting things I ate in Manhattan on my recent trip.
The non-meat and fish is also coincidentally – or not – the best of the appetizers too. The Casarecce pasta with peas and parmesan is such a fresh dish that its ingredients feel, and look, just plucked from the ground. Apparently, they are. (Everything is seasonal and local where possible.) Crunchy, ripe pea pods are cut into thirds, the pasta is al dente and the parmesan piled high. Stir it all together and watch the cheese dissolve.
We went for the three-course prix fixe with ‘Peak’ wine pairings, an additional $99, and worth it for the rare Napa Valley Chardonnay in particular, which pairs beautifully with the trout entrée and the sweet potato.
Did I mention the New York skyline view? The highest restaurant, and observation deck in Midtown (and the second-highest in Manhattan, losing out to the 1,268 feet-high Freedom Tower Downtown), on a clear day you can see all the way to beaches of Jersey Shore and the Rockaways, where Manhattanites daytrip on sunny days.
You know what’s in the foreground. The Empire State, the Chrysler, all that good stuff. But most importantly, excellent people watching (this is where Manhattan locals go when they fancy dressing up) and that vegan sweet potato dish.
Book a table at the Peak restaurant on their website