Dining in the Theatre District?

[wickedfan11]

Posted: 7/9/10 at 3:56pm

My friend would like to eat at Ellen's Stardust Diner for lunch next Saturday. She is coming into Penn Station around 11:00 AM, and we need to be at Lincoln Center for the 2:00 matinee of South Pacific. To eliminate the riskiness of waiting in line, is it possible to make reservations?

[tamra2]

Posted: 7/9/10 at 4:02pm

i dont know if they do reservations or not but according to the website their phone number is 212-956-5151 give them a call and hope for the best but if your friend's train gets in at 11 i dont see how you would risk being late for the show if you went straight to the restaurant.

[Eris0303]

Posted: 7/9/10 at 4:50pm

It shouldn't be too bad if it's just the two of you. Even if the line is out the door you can go in and ask if they have seating for two people. A lot of the time the people waiting are larger groups waiting for a booth or one of the larger tables. So if one of the smaller tables are free you can get it.

[AudreyTwoTwo]

Posted: 7/9/10 at 5:57pm

I don't think you can make reservations because we tried to do that and we failed (epicly). Of course, this was the day before Thanksgiving.
But Ellen's is more uptown anyway and it doesn't take that long for the food to get to your table so I don't think it'd be too much of a problem anyway.

[bwaylvsong]

Posted: 7/9/10 at 8:33pm

It might be better for you to go to the restaurant a little earlier to wait for a table and have your friend meet you there instead of the station.

[Andante]

Posted: 7/10/10 at 12:24am

You should be fine with a walk-in; Ellen's does take reservations, but that's primarily for large groups.

[Eris0303]

Posted: 7/10/10 at 12:47am

It might be better for you to go to the restaurant a little earlier to wait for a table and have your friend meet you there instead of the station.

Some places won't seat you until you entire party has arrived. I ran into that problem at Junior's when I was trying to plan a Mother's Day surprise. I was going to get a table and have my brothers just "happen" to show up. But they wouldn't seat us until my brothers arrived and ended up giving away the surprise to my mom even after I pulled her aside and explained it was a surprise.

[legally_popular]

Posted: 7/10/10 at 8:17am

If you don't mind sitting at the counter at Ellen's, that's also a good option if there are no tables available yet. I actually kinda prefer sitting at the counter because the tables for two are so close together (I couldn't take the smell of the fish of the woman next to me when I was trying to eat my omelette - ew!).