Palettes of the day

A QUALITY quartet of Manhattan museums boasts convivial dining venues.

With its curved banquettes and murals, the Wright at the Guggenheim offers a range of modern American cuisine.

WOULD you like a Warhol with your waldorf salad? A Rousseau with your risotto, a Tintoretto with your tiramisu?

It's easy to combine art appreciation with delicious dining in Manhattan. Few visitors would pass up the opportunity to visit a selection of NYC's fabulous art museums, and whether your tastes run to contemporary or classical, there's a venue to suit.

And while strolling and savouring the treasures on display, take a break on site for lunch or morning or afternoon tea. Dinner is also served at many museum restaurants and the rooftop of the Great Hall Balcony Bar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art dishes up drinks, canapes and live classical music on Friday and Saturday from 4.30pm to 8.30pm, while its Roof Garden Cafe has a martini bar from May to October that opens from 5.30pm to 8pm. The views over Central Park and down Fifth Avenue from this broad rooftop are sensational.

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Robert, Museum of Art and Design: Opened a year ago on the ninth floor of MAD, overlooking Columbus Circle and the Gotham City skyscrapers of Central Park West, this hip restaurant has a groovy design that echoes the exhibits and installations of the floors below, affordable food and boppy service.

There's an exposed ceiling with pink Lucite lights, a colour scheme of orange, purple and aquamarine, and a shiny black piano. You could be in a penthouse apartment, and indeed the place was named for a chap who saw his share of same: Robert Isabell, society florist and party planner to the city's elite, who was once dubbed by Vogue's Anna Wintour as "the king of the event world". There are low-backed banquettes and clear tubular chairs in the centre seating area while windowside tables (book for these) are of more conventional design. The view wraps around the back, too, down Broadway, so all diners have a sense of dining in the sky (even the loos have views).

There's a three-course table d'hote lunch menu with limited but perfectly acceptable options such as soup of the day, fettuccine primavera and cheesecake for $US29. A la carte options are also available at lunch and there's a fancier dinner menu plus, at any old time, a party-mood prosecco and elderflower liqueur cocktail named for Isabell. More: Lunch 11.30am-3.30pm; dinner 5.30pm-midnight (MAD is closed on Mondays). 2 Columbus Circle; www.robertnyc.com or www.madmuseum.org.

Terrace Cafe, Museum of Modern Art: In a perfect midtown location, flanked by shops and plazas, the modern and contemporary art mecca of MoMA has had an overhaul and is twice the size, airier and user-friendly, thanks to the superb design of Yoshio Taniguchi. The Modern is its most grown-up dining venue, with Picassos virtually at elbow and award-winning fare from Alsace-born executive chef Gabriel Kreuther, white-dressed tables and the hush of serious dining.

But the fifth-floor Terrace Cafe, a kind of cafeteria-plus with waiter service, ticks the lunchtime boxes. It's a bright space, just off the Painting and Sculpture Galleries, and with a covered terrace looking across the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden. The white tables and curvy grey felt chairs are by Arne Jacobsen, plates and dishes are by Royal Copenhagen and the cutlery is Georg Jensen at its sleekest.

A watermelon gazpacho is $US10; a grilled shrimp and green papaya salad is $US17. A slice of tart (perhaps roasted cauliflower and blue cheese) with salad is $US12 and, crucially for lagged gallery-goers, the coffee, from Pennsylvania supplier La Colombe, is superb. There's wine by the glass for $US8 and a fantastic selection of cheese from New York state. You get the feeling here, more so than at other museums and galleries, of a pride in revealing the provenance of suppliers, which is in tune with surroundings dedicated to artworks that are all about context and lineage.

Like all the venues listed, MoMA has an amazing shop, full of bespoke gift ideas and mementoes, including funky acrylic jewellery, decanters and candle holders. Also note that MoMA has an exhibition on the evolution of the 20th-century kitchen, Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen, which runs to March 14. More: Lunch and snacks, 11am-5pm and to 7.30pm on Friday (MoMA is closed on Tuesdays). 11 West 53rd St (between Fifth and Sixth avenues); www.moma.org.

The Wright Restaurant, the Guggenheim: The year-old Wright is named (of course) for architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who designed this museum, controversially styled as an inverted ziggurat, more than a half century ago to house Solomon R. Guggenheim's collection of early modern masterpieces; the new dining space's architect, Andre Kikoski, has picked up this year's James Beard Foundation Award for Outstanding Restaurant Design. It's the only one of these four restaurants that can be accessed during the day without paying a museum entry fee (there's an entrance on the Guggenheim rotunda's south flank, off East 88th Street) and the Wright has a fit-out worthy of a cocktail lounge, with curved banquettes and a mural installation of planks in multi-coloured powder-coated aluminium.

The food is modern American, with an emphasis on local, seasonal and sustainable ingredients; the perfect lunchtime dish is the Wright salad with mixed vegetables, shitake mushrooms, watercress puree, soft-boiled egg and shaved truffles ($US21).

The fixed-price two-course lunch menu is $US24 and the "young artists" menu for children has dishes from $US9. If you just want to drop in for a snack, there's a convivial centre space that does espressos, specialty teas, cold drinks and paninis. More: Lunch 11.30am to 3.30pm, Monday-Wednesday and Friday-Saturday; dinner 5.30pm-11pm, Thursday-Saturday; Sunday brunch (must book) 11am-3.30pm (the Guggenheim is closed on Thursdays). 1071 Fifth Ave at 88th Street; www.thewrightrestaurant.com or www.guggenheim.org.

Petrie Court Cafe & Wine Bar, the Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Guggenheim's neighbour, lovingly known as the Met, is the biggest and the best known and has several dining options, of which the most convivial is the Petrie Terrace off the European Sculpture Court on the first floor.

Aim to be here, beside the Berninis and Rodins, at the pip of 11.30am when lunchtime queues begin to form (no bookings). You'll want a table next to the window walls with views of Central Park through a row of contemporary sculptures. This cafe feels continental, with chequerboard-tiled floor, Parisian cafe chairs, marble-topped tables and waiters dashing about in long black aprons. There's plenty of bustle, so the scene is perfect for solo diners.

A chilled asparagus soup with lime creme fraiche is $US9, cavatelli pasta with pesto Genovese, English peas, tomato and asparagus is $US18; add a very good double-shot espresso coffee and I'm all done for just more than $US30. There are also steak sandwiches, savoury tarts and colourful salads of the likes of heirloom tomatoes, watermelon, feta and sea salt, and there's an afternoon tea menu for $US24.

Then it's back to the museum's vast Annenberg Collection, awash with Manets and Monets, Seurats and Sisleys, and the Period Rooms where, among other wonders, there's a mechanical marquetry table that can be cranked up or down and was made for Marie Antoinette at Versailles in 1778. More: Lunch 11.30am-4.30pm (afternoon tea also served); check website for dinner, breakfast and brunch options (The Met is closed on Mondays). 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street; www.metmuseum.org.

Checklist
The New York CityPass, which can be bought at any participating attraction for $US79, includes admission to many city galleries and museums; overall savings work out at about $US65. More: www.citypass.com.

The perfect hotel in the Upper East Side, within easy strolling of the Guggenheim and the Met, is the residential-style Surrey, which features a rooftop garden, restaurant by Daniel Boulud and super-chic Bar Pleiades with original artwork and fashion-themed decor. More: www.thesurreyhotel.com.

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