We were in New York for three days I think, and I'm pretty sure we moved to the much nicer Mercer Hotel, although the only reason I think this is because I remember some of our friends passed out in the lobby of the Mercer one night, and I think they were there because we were staying there. I know that one night we had dinner at Daniel, one of a handful of restaurants awarded four stars from the New York Times. Daniel is the main restaurant of uber-chef Daniel Boulud, and it does churn out great food. But overall the experience was pretty cold and corporate. The room is tough, no windows, done up like a Venetian palace, so it borders on Vegas-y. But mainly it's the service that got on my nerves. If you only eat in American restaurants, then you'd be comfortable with the service here. And I used to be impressed with places like this when I lived there. But there's such a difference in restaurants in the US and almost everywhere else that I'm no longer used to the American approach, and it really struck me as fake. Everything is designed to upsell and get you moving out of the table so they can seat usually two or three sittings a night. In Europe it's one sitting per night, and the whole feel is so much more relaxed and elegant. There are also lots more waiters around in non-US restaurants, so in New York as you're talking to the waiter, he or she is more likely looking around the room seeing what else his large number of tables needs. And because they're so stretched, they engage in fake pleasantries rather than really engage with their smaller number of customers. (Of course I'm comparing apples to apples here, top New York vs. top non-US restaurants; we all know of tourist traps strewn about Europe with god-awful service). And there's no particular reason why I'm ranting about service here, as it's probably better than 90 percent of all other American restaurants, except that this was probably the highest-rated restaurant I had been to in the US and expected it to conform more to global standards, which it didn't. (15-14-11)