When looking for a great pre- or post-theater experience with fine dining, style and ambience, look no further. This charming theater-district Brasserie has seating for 150 in dining room, and can additionally accommodate 25 at upstairs the handsome zinc bar and 45 to 60 in lower-level bar. Vibrant and colorful, Marseille takes its aesthetic cues from the port city of the same name, one of France's most culturally-diverse areas. A former bank vault protects the restaurant's considerable and excellent collection of wines from the Mediterranean. While Marseille is, of course, a predominantly French restaurant, it takes the city's same mixture of Italian, Greek, and even North African influences into culinary consideration, creating a menu that ranges deftly around the region, celebrating the unique landmark fare of each area.
Terrific appetizers include a fine goat cheese tart, a wonderful preparation of scallops, and some rather amusing shrimp beignets. You might also opt for house-cured sardines or grilled octopus. Soups are delightful, and main courses span the range from a decent bouillabaisse marseillaise (no shellfish), steak frites, moules provençale and Moroccan chicken. Marseille even bows to its American home with a devilishly good "five napkin" burger that is the height of gourmet sinfulness.
Marseille is located in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan. Known as "Clinton" by the municipal government and devotees of former mayor DeWitt Clinton and as "Hell's Kitchen" by Daredevil and everyone else, this area of Midtown West is currently experiencing rapid (re)development. Spanning roughly from West 34th to 59th Streets and from 8th Avenue to the Hudson River, it still has a rough-and-tumble character when compared with other more defined neighborhoods in Manhattan. Once a bastion of poor and working-class Irish Americans, over the last decade the neighborhood has undergone tremendous gentrification as a result of its proximity to Midtown's many office buildings. Long-time residents, many of whom enjoyed reasonable rents and decent-sized apartments, are finding that conversion of rent-controlled and -stabilized apartments, coupled with the general building boom and strong economy, brought quick change to this formerly sleepy area. Given the strange, even Byzantine zoning regulations in New York, it’s not unusual to see a tiny brownstone, a remnant of another era, adjacent to or near a brand-new high-rise rental or condominium building. While the wholesome new Theater District has resulted in lower crime rates and decreased the area’s quality-of-life problems such as prostitution, urban transformation for some means a loss of the gritty qualities of this neighborhood for others. While you'll find thousands of new apartments in Hell's Kitchen west of Ninth Avenue, you'll also find dozens of eclectic and interesting restaurants to boot. Some of our favorites include the terrific Daisy May's BBQ on Eleventh Avenue; the German cuisine of Hallo Berlin and nearby Queen of Sheba featuring great Ethiopian cuisine on Tenth Avenue; French patisserie La Bergamote on West 42nd Street; Bali Nusa Indah on Ninth Avenue has intriguing Indonesian dishes; the Film Center Café for high-powered American diner-style dishes; and the many Thai places dotting Ninth Avenue too numerous to mention. Hotels in Hell's Kitchen include a number of budget places the further west you go such as The 414 Hotel and the Skyline. While there are dozens of hotels on Eighth Avenue and throughout the Theater District on Eighth Avenue and Broadway, Hell's Kitchen enjoys a somewhat more relaxed pace than the frenetic hubbub you'll find just two avenues further east. Check out the neighborhood's weekly Chelsea-Clinton News, a great local publication that’s been around longer than the former U.S. President’s daughter!
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