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Everything’s coming up roses—and orchids, hydrangea and assorted other flora—at this Edenic New American restaurant overlooking Central Park. Like a private English garden, the dining room is an elegant study in green and white, with a large fountain, towering columns, and clutches of exotic blooms on every table. The menu is equally invigorating—there’s a wide selection of seafood rounded out with veal, lamb, and steak options with inspired accompaniments like Jerusalem artichoke purée and curry eggplant caviar. Garden freshness is evident in every bite: a salad of crisp julienne vegetables includes fragrantly herbed medallions of goat cheese, while a massive and tender bone-in veal chop is tempered by a velvety truffle risotto. The crab cake, with its feather light breading, is more crab than cake, made of jumbo lump meat so tasty and it might well have been plucked straight from sea to plate. Located in the Essex House hotel, Cafe Botanica proves itself a worthy contender to Alain Ducasse, a few steps away, affording its own impeccably elegant dining experience, replete with butler-attentive staff, arresting entrée presentation, and a stunning view of hansom cabs trotting past the park outside. — Melissa Kirsch

Mon-Fri, choose two of three options, $25

Pre-Theater Menu
Daily, 5pm-7pm; three courses, $40

Brunch
Sun, 11am-2:30pm, with champagne

Maryland jumbo lump crab cake, $32