(Photo: Nikolas Koenig)

The Best Bet
Even in an age of designer museums, the art-dining experience remains at best adequate and, at worst, desultory. The Bar Room, Danny Meyer’s less formal eating option at MoMA (the full-fledged space, the Modern, is supposed to open in a few weeks) instantly raises the bar. The chic minimalism you’d expect—Poul Kjaerholm stools and dining chairs, Georg Jensen settings and table accessories, a wall made from a luminescent glass-encased forest photo by German artist Thomas Demand—is matched by the food: swift yet sophisticated dishes like a piquant peekytoe-crab salad and decadent steak tartare with quail egg. (The pictured barstools are by New York designer Mark Albrecht.) A few reservations are available, and it’s not a bad idea to make one—even on quiet days, numerous tables are almost always taken—but if you sidle up to the bar, you should get a seat within minutes.