Five Points Restaurant

Address:
31 Great Jones Street
New York, NY 10012

Website: www.fivepointsrestaurant.com

I would have posted pictures, except it was kind of dark in the restaurant so the macro pics on my phonecam came out blurry. I would say the dishes tasted better than they look.

Pros: Food, Service, Decor, Ambiance
Cons: Limited menu, 20% auto-added tip
Make Reservations?: Yes

Ordered:
Drinks: Blood orange fresca, passion fruit fresca
Starter - Pork and Fennel Sausage
Entree - Swordfish, Flap Steak
Dessert - Chocolate Pecan Brownie Sundae (espresso ice cream)

Food was good, but I wouldn't say great. Definitely worth a try, especially with the 30% off from Blackboard Eats. I don't think I would have ever stepped foot into this place if it weren't for Blackboard.

The bill came out to roughly $73 for 2 people. Make reservations because the restaurant was filled up by 6pm. We had reservations for 6pm on a Saturday night, but showed up at 5:30pm exactly when they start dinner. Service is really good. The waitress actually asked us if we were members of Blackboard before we could even tell her. Our cups were always filled, and dirty plates always taken away promptly.

The drinks were very nice and refreshing. They use fresh juice supposedly and the drinks were $5 each. I really wish the cups were bigger.

The appetizer was good. It was cooked with lima beans, very tender and flavorful. Never had beans like that before. Swordfish was surprisingly not dry, but that's probably because of all the butter they used. The fish sat on a bed of collard greens, red onions, tomatoes and potatoes (with skin), some kind of garlic sauce. I ordered the steak medium, and it actually arrived medium. It wasn't a chunk of steak, rather they filleted it so I didn't have to do much cutting. Some may not like that, but I was fine. On top of the steak was a green sauce, which I wasn't a big fan of. It had a fragrance to it. On the side was watercress salad and beer-battered onion rings. I don't know how people can eat watercress raw. It's so bitter. The dressing was nice, but not enough to mask the nasty watercress. I finished all the onion rings. It was delicious! I didn't even need ketchup for it.

Dessert was 3 nice scoops of espresso ice cream, and chunks of chocolate pecan brownie with chocolate fudge and a dollop of whip cream. I could have used more brownie chunks. They were mmm-mmm good.

The evening was wonderful until we got the bill and saw that they automatically calculated a 20% tip. That was kind of a turn-off. I know I'm supposed to add the tip to the pre-discount amount. A suggested tip would have been better than automatically tacking it on. Anyhow, it's not the end of the world, and the 30% discount covers the tip. So I won't dwell on this.