My good friend from college and her med-school friend stayed with me before a conference in the city, so I needed to find a spot for us to eat. To say I was low on money would be an understatement, but I didn’t want to totally cheap-out on their one night with me. Luckily they were in the mood for Thai and that’s usually an affordable cuisine.
Photo from Yelp
We started with the summer rolls ($5) stuffed with baby spinach, rice noodles, carrots, celery and a peanut-plum dipping sauce, and they were pretty good. All appetizers menu were between $4-6, so there’s no reason not to try at least one. And if you have a hungry group, you might as well opt for the tasting menu – any three appetizers for $12.
Before we met up they were waiting for me at one of my favorite happy hour spots in the city - City Crab. So while they had a few drinks in them before dinner, I was sober and ready to go. Naturally I wanted to split a bottle of wine and they kindly obliged me. But the good news came when we checked out the wine menu – bottles ranged from $16 – 24. Yes, $24 was the most expensive bottle of wine on the menu. This was great. Beers were $5-5.50 and cocktails started at $6. Again, low on money, we went for the $16 Barefoot Pinot Grigio (despite the good wine price for a restaurant, it still killed me slightly to pay nearly three times as much for a Barefoot bottle of wine).
Since they snacked on oysters and mussels marinara at City Crab earlier, they decided to just split the vegetable pad thai and I had the chicken pad thai, both $9. The food was really good and I was happy to have some leftovers for the next day. I thought it was a good balance between sauce and chicken/noodles, as well as between spicy and sweet. I’ve had quite a few pad thai disappointments, so I was very pleased that this met if not exceeded my expectations.
We all really liked the restaurant and I will definitely be back. It had a cute décor, great prices, good food and for me personally, a very convenient location.
The Basics Name: The Lantern Location: 311 Second Avenue Who to take: Friends, Family, a date Price: $$ Slightly below average Overall: Pretty good overall; 4 stars
[...] underground a bit (perhaps three steps down?) and 2nd Avenue is pretty vacant near us (Posto and The Lantern are the other two spots that come to mind, along with some Italian restaurant that I never tried) [...]