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Tags: Manhattan Restaurants / Restaurants / Food Travel / Franchises / T.G.I. Friday's / → All Tags

Drinking and Dining in Penn Station: The T.G.I. Friday's Experience

I'll cop to being a bit of a restaurant snob, but it's pretty much impossible to live in New York and not be one. With so many excellent eateries around town, the idea of dining or drinking at a franchise joint like Applebee's, the Olive Garden, or the Outback Steakhouse just doesn't make sense. Those places are for the corn-fed tourists in Times Square who don't know any better, right? Well, there was one franchise place that I always wanted to check out, and last week I did exactly that. My choice was a doozy: the T.G.I. Friday's in Penn Station. I wanted to find out for myself if it was as lousy as I had imagined, or if I needed to get over my little superiority complex and enjoy an experience that the rest of America seems to have no problem with.

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Tags: Eat-n-Sleep / Berlin Travel / Europe Travel / → All Tags

Eat 'n Sleep Berlin :: unsicht-Bar and Hotel Kastanienhof

Our Eat 'n Sleep feature profiles a restaurant in a random city and a hotel nearby. It's kinda like that old show "Dinner and a Movie" but you know, with restaurants and hotels. And better jokes.

If you want to dine with a difference in Berlin then it's the unsicht-Bar that you should head to. The name translates to invisible bar, and that's what your food is here--they've skimped on decor costs and made the restaurant pitch black the idea being that the rest of your senses will enjoy your meal for your eyes. You'll get a bit of coaching on where to find everything in the dark, and they arrange everything like a clock so you can know that you'll find your spoon at 12 o'clock and your fork at 9. The menu is short--you can choose from a 3 or 4 course meal, with a theme like fish, poultry, lamb, veal or vegetarian. The rest is a mystery until it gets into your mouth.

After being in the dark all evening, it's just a short stroll--even blindfolded--to the Hotel-Pension Kastanienhof at Kastanienallee 65. Both spots are close to the Rosenthaler Platz U-Bahn station and the Kastanienhof has that quaint wooden German look about it. You can get anything from a single room up to a two-room apartment suite at prices starting at around €100 ($140), including a typically burdensome German breakfast. (You can even invite your pals in for breakfast at €9 a head). That gives you plenty of eating in Berlin, just don't forget that it's also a city with plenty to see, too--once you've opened your eyes.

Related Stories:
· unsicht-Bar [Official Site]
· Hotel-Pension Kastanienhof [Official Site]
· Dark Dining [Jaunted]
· Berlin Travel coverage [Jaunted]
· Berlin Hotels [HotelChatter]

[Photo: HeideKlein_OrangenKopf]