Esperanto

Sensing a bit of a theme to my NY reviews? I don't think it was intentional, but I did seem to end up in a lot of Brazilian / latin style places. Not normally a bad thing in my experience. Esperanto is definitely a restaurant to check out if you're in Manhattan. The food is 'latin fusion' and very very tasty. Between us we tried the feijoada (very typical Brazilian meat/bean stew) halibut, tuna and carne asada. All were almost perfectly cooked and full of flavour. Even the side orders of greens and coconut infused rice were pretty memorable. I forget what we had for starter, but that was good as well. The bill was unbelievably cheap for the quality of food, coming out to 25 ($50) per person, including starters, mains, pudding, wine and extras (port, which was DISGUSTING - DO NOT ORDER!!). In addition, the atmosphere was great - quite buzzy and normally they have live music, though not when we went - and you have a choice of indoor and outdoor tables. Service was fine, but not memorable and we had to wait a good while for a table (but that was because Tom booked the wrong place) so shouldn't be a problem if you book in advance.