Boutique Eat Shop Visited 9/18/10 3.75 Forks

Boutique Eat Shop  559 W 22nd St, (between 10th Ave & West St), Manhattan, NY 10011

 Ok, I will admit that this place is kind of out of the way.  11th avenue is a good 15 min walk from the subway, which doesn't really seem that bad, but when you are in the hurry, seems to take forever. 

I chose this place because I had a 25% BBE code and it was close to my friend's Yilin's apartment and it was on the way to the American Natural History Museum, where Dan and I were going to after brunch.  


While the walk is long, it's a really nice walk through a great neighborhood.  Chelsea is really a great part of New York and you get to walk through the Art Gallery section as well.  The inside of this restaurant is quite funky.  It's got velvet couches, the jugs filled with wax as lighting and a giant white house cut-out in front of the back bar.  The menu has traditional brunch food with a slight upscale twist.  My first impression was that the prices were about $2-3 too much for what it should be.  In an effort to be healthy I got the egg white omelet with fresh tomato salsa ($12), while Dan got a smoked salmon benedict with a side of asparagus wrapped in bacon ($14).  Yilin also got the benedict and her husband, Josh, got the french toast.  The waitstaff was super nice there and offered up the fact that the benedict isn't a "hot" dish.  They also ooh'd and ahh'd over Yilin's super cute baby and made no fuss about the fact that we had a baby in a slightly nice restaurant. 

Overall, I thought that the food was very good.  Maybe it's because I went the healthy route, but I still felt a bit hungry afterwards.  My meal came with a nice side arugula salad, which I'm honestly not used to.  I usually get a side of bacon or sausage to help fill me up.  Dan's benedict was very good and it wasn't as cold as they waitress made it out to be.  The twist on it was that it was on a nice fluffy piece of challah-type bread, not your typical english muffin.  It also came with a healthy heap of spinach, which is nice because usually with benedict you have to choose between salmon or spinach.  

With the discount, the total bill came out to be $60 total, which isn't horrible but when you factor in that I had to use a 25% discount to get to that figure, it's a tad bit overpriced.  But if you're in the area or are near the art galleries or Chelsea Piers, it's a good place to eat.