The Standard Grill

While restaurant hopping's integral to the New York lifestyle, spending mornings at the cafe, afternoons at the bistro, and evenings at the...rathskeller will eventually reduce your hop to a shambling waddle. Don't let anyone see you can no longer walk, at the Standard Grill, opening Friday.

Hunkered beneath the Standard Hotel's imposing Bauhausery, the Grill's actually three glorious spaces in one: an outdoor, brickwork sausage-and-beer grotto nestled between massive steel support beams under the newly opened High Line Park; a sunlit, B&W-tiled, French-style bistro w/ a blonde wood full bar; and a white tablecloth dining room w/ vaulted ceilings and blood red banquettes -- in sum, everything needed to fulfill Maslow's Hierarchy of Feeds. On the hearty end of the spectrum, fare includes grilled salmon steak, rigatoncini pasta (ridged, for your pleasure), and classic steak frites, all from the founding chef of Lever House, which, like a post-Marcel Friends, pretended everything was fine as long as it could before eventually closing shop. Vehicles for enlightenment run from suds (Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout, Hoptical Illusion IPA...), to pan-world vino, to single malts (Oban 14yr, Highland Park 18yr...), with classic cocktails (Rickshaw w/ bourbon and ginger beer, vespas, sidecars, etc) coming from a former mixologist at Employees Only, which now has one more non-employee to fake exclude.

The Grill's holding friends and family dinners through Thursday but plans to open Friday. And in a few months, the Standard'll open a two-story club on its rooftop with breathtaking 360-degree views of the city and, below, people who look like ants. Pudgy, sweating ants.