Simon & The Whale

Gabriel Stulman's Happy Cooking Hospitality group built a reputation across Manhattan for restaurants that felt genuinely inhabited rather than designed for Instagram, and Simon & The Whale, occupying the ground level of the Freehand New York hotel on Lexington Avenue, followed that pattern. The kitchen under chef Matt Griffin drew on a wide range of influences — Italian technique, North African seasoning, and what the New York Times noted as nods toward various Asian countries — without losing coherence. That range landed the restaurant a place in New York Magazine's The Thousand Best, a list that rewards consistent execution over novelty. The menu leaned into the kind of cooking that works in a hotel dining room serving both hotel guests and Flatiron regulars: dishes with enough ambition to satisfy a destination diner, approachable enough for a Tuesday night. Pork collar Milanese, squid confit with smoked mussels, black bass crudo, and squid ink tagliatelle were among the dishes that defined the kitchen's output, spanning the Italian-leaning and seafood-forward registers the restaurant became known for. The setting matched the food's register — a bustling, wood-accented space that read as sophisticated without being stiff. The Flatiron and Gramercy stretch of Lexington Avenue has long supported hotel restaurants that punch above their weight, and Simon & The Whale fit that category during its run. Pricing sat in the mid-to-upscale range for Manhattan; a whole fish for two at $60 placed the menu firmly in the territory where quality expectations are high. The restaurant has since closed, and the address at 23 Lexington Avenue no longer operates under this name.