The Four Seasons Restaurant (CLOSED)

For almost half a century, New York's grande dame of special-occasion restaurants has held court on 52nd Street. Though the Grill Room’s famously high-rolling power lunch is the institution's true raison’être, dinner in the Pool Room—a palatial dining arena centered on a bubbling marble pool—certainly has its charms. Signature dishes like the crisp-skinned duck, carved tableside, and delicate quenelles of Maryland crab haven’t lost their luster, but the song and dance of starched-white waiters spouting canned New York-isms can make even the most hardened Manhattanite feel like a tourist. Freebies, like great hives of bubblegum-pink cotton candy, soften the economic blow; it’s worth the expense, if only to see the show.