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Blaring truck horns and nosy or aggressive passersby can ruin an outdoor meal. Manhattan Sky’s weirdly pleasant, airborne café-style setup ensures this won’t happen. On the second floor of the Grand Hyatt Hotel, with a metal girder framework that supports massive sloping windows, the restaurant is hermetically sealed, and noiseless. As such, it feels eerily in the city, but also removed from it. Timorous tourists and busy suits from nearby Grand Central must prefer it this way, because the interior verges on dowdy. Furnishings and carpeting are done in shades of brown and olive, and although hanging lampshades in burgundy, beige, and mustard add some visual interest, the place is anything but contemporary. The American menu is predictable, as if on autopilot, and hit or miss: salads, classic sandwiches, panini, and a handful of entrees, all of which make you feel like you’re eating at Hyatt Anytown. But unless you’re going for the quick buffet or you’re looking for a quiet, centrally located place to expense lunch, why not seek better eats in the scarier, noisier, pleasure-filled streets? — Michael Anstendig

The restaurant’s elaborate breakfast buffet offers early and late risers made-to-order omelets, breakfast meats, charcuterie, hot and cold cereals, pastries, fresh fruit, juice, and coffee.