Hey you New Yorkers (and others in-the-know),

From this list of Manhattan restaurants, give me the top few for dinner for four. BYOB not necessary and in fact, the wine list is secondary [gasp!]. Thanks.

Marea
A Voce
Dovetail
Eighty One
SD-26
Corton
Gramercy Tavern
One Madison Park
Hearth
Mas
Blue Hill
Del Posto

It all depends upon what you are looking for in terms of style of restaurant, ambiance, etc. The ones you've listed cover a VERY wide range of cuisines, styles, price points.

What are you looking for for this particular dinner/event? Otherwise, you are going to get all sorts of recs for all types of reasons.

I vote Gramercy Tavern, perenially one of the best restaurants in NYC. Del Posto is also very good.

I don't know much about or haven't been to any of the others except Blue Hill, and that was years ago, though I liked it at the time.

If you want to try a wonderful kosher restaurant in Manhattan, check out Cafe K... their pasta and fish are to die for.

I Agree with ChefJune. What are you looking for? NYC is probably the number one food destination on the planet. There's no other place on earth with the variety of choices we have here.

My NY must-go list.... Hearth, Terroir, Balthazar, Minetta Tavern, Locanda Verde, Momofuku (all 3), Taim, Babbo, Shake Shack, Dressler (Brooklyn), Motorino (Brooklyn), Mary's Fish Camp, Nobu57.

From your list, Gramercy Tavern is a NYC institution and Eleven Madison Park is one of my favorite fine-dining spots. Corton is supposed to be great (has been on my to-go list for a while) and the new A Voce is apparently nice too (Andrew Carmellini, the original chef, is now cooking at Locanda Verde in my list above).

Well, again, it depends on what you're looking for. From your list, and in reference to the comment above, Gramercy Tavern really never disappoints. On the other hand, I have found, on multiple occasions, EMP and Hearth underwhelming.

Don't get me started on Momofuku.
I prefer Pearl to Mary's.

For what it's worth, you no longer have to go to Brooklyn for Motorino. Now in the old Una Pizza spot on 12th street. In my opinion, an improvement.

I'm sure we can do better if you can be more specific.

Thanks for all the great suggestions. I agree that NY is a great dining destination. We try to hit a few new places each time we're there but unfortunately we really only have two evenings this trip before we head out to Long Island for Thanksgiving.

My wife and I prefer pan-asian cuisine. So far, of all the asian fusion recommendations we've received, Fatty Crab looks great to us. We may try that one night after we we do a matinee of Hair.

The other night we will be with my Manhattan in-laws. They're a bit more traditional and looking for more fine dining. My sister-in-law is the one who came up with the list I posted. From that list, Eleven Madison looks like the best menu for our tastes but we're really not in the mood to do Italian this time so that rules out a lot of that list.

Fatty Crab is fantastic. Needless to say, order the crab.

I would say try corton if you can. i am going to new a voce this wknd and will let you know, havent been yet.