A dinner rolls around - maybe it’s a last minute group dinner, maybe it’s near Columbus Circle, maybe someone is bringing a small child or a difficult eater. Someone’s going to recommend The Smith. And you’re going to say, “Well... isn’t there something else?”

We don’t have anything against The Smith, per se, other than its ubiquity - there are four locations in Manhattan, each one bigger than the last, and those OpenTable reservations are always there for the taking, which means someone’s inevitably going to recommend it. Like Westville, it’s another one of those places that, when suggested in our Text Rex service, almost always results in a reply of, “Yeah, I’m looking for something like The Smith, but not actually The Smith.”

In those cases, here’s where to go.