Beware the $750 gift card scam!
I called Eleven Madison Park to prepay for a dinner for my brother as a birthday gift -- $750 for two. They said the only way to do it is to buy a gift card, which has to be a physical card and has to be shipped by courier at an extra charge, and I agreed. EMP allows reservations only online and only one day a month. But what they don't tell you is that even if you set up an account in advance and make sure you're on their site at 9am, it's not actually possible to book tables at 9:01am. And worse, when you go back to them and explain politely that you've tried three months in succession to make a reservation and you're now giving up and so you'd like them to refund the gift card, then they reveal that they have a "policy" of never refunding gift cards. I'm sure the food is very nice. But this is simply sleazy, and they're taking advantage of the restaurant's popularity to take interest-free loans from potential customers which may never be redeemed. Their company is called MakeItNiceNYC.com, but that's not what they do. I think of this as a bit like dirty bathrooms. Would you really want to eat in a restaurant that treats its customers like that?
By TJ