Park Rose

Park Rose is certainly an establishment that's perpetually in bloom. The ground-floor restaurant inside Hotel Park Ave, NY, speaks only in the language of spring, with cascading greens spinning from the ceiling and rosy-pink velvet booths and chairs stamped with more florals. It will certainly keep your date blushing with a wheeled cart that pours house-made vermouth tableside; you can drink it on the rocks or have it fashioned into a spritz. As for food, the menu cycles through Italian offerings that do little to challenge the genre, with nicely salted scallops served with a swipe of celery root and roasted peppers that are jammy-sweet but look a little like deflated balloons, with an odd, melted pool of stracciatella on top. There are certainly more thorns to sort out, including thin-crust pizzas that eat like run-of-the-mill flatbreads and an ndjua pasta that's billed as spicy but screams of a whole lot of paprika and not much else. The saving grace is a tiramisu that does its job (chocolatey with airy mascarpone) and the fact that the London import Seed Library is just a staircase away in the basement. But that isn't to say that Park Rose doesn't have its place in the garden, as a fun summertime tableside spritz with the girls is certainly an option.