I recently found myself at One, the restaurant aside Gansevoort in Meatpacking which is the promoter pre-party dinner hub of the city. To explain what that means, you’ve gotta know that promoters often cut deals with New York City restaurants, bringing their hot entourage to eat for free before attending whatever club they’re herding people to that evening.

Why This Works: A Flow Chart (keep in mind I haven’t made a flow chart since eighth grade):

Generally speaking, it’s a promoter’s job to have hot chicks and guys who’ll buy tables at their beck and call –> For the most part, guys who buy bottle service work all the time (allowing them to afford bottle service) and being hard workers, don’t have a time to socially micromanage a glamorous entourage. –> Since partying at a table alone without a glamorous entourage is considered faux-pas and a major waste of alcohol, the hard workers decide to team up with a promoter who is, for all practical purposes, a species of middleman. –> On the opposite end of the spectrum, those who make up the glamorous entourage most likely can’t afford a table of their own, hence their decision to work with a promoter. –> To further entice the glamorous entourage to come out with them, promoters will offer perks like limo rides or free dinner at a trendy NYC restaurant pre-clubbing. –> Trendy NYC restaurants need good-looking patrons into order to retain their aforementioned status as trendy. –> Since a promoter already has a glamorous entourage that can’t afford trendy dinners at their disposal, the promoter offers their encourage to eat and drink for free beforehand at [insert trendy restaurant here] –> The restaurant gives away free food to the promoter and their group in exchange for what is essentially, product placement PR with humans. –> Theoretically, everybody wins.

I’m sure many variations of this formula exist, but this is its core function as I understand it. Many restaurants (more than I can list) work with promoters in this capacity, but I don’t think any participate as much as Gansevoort’s next door neighbor, One.

One has really uncomfortable seats and tables, insanely loud music, and mediocre food. At some promotional restaurant gigs, you actually see a menu and order whatever you choose. At most however, menus are a never presented and the server just brings out select appetizers and main courses for everyone to share family-style while boozing people up on a lot of champagne. A sample promotional dinner at One consists of:

-Unlimited wine and champagne (dangerous)

-A shared Caeser-like salad (pretty good)

-A shared quesadilla (pretty gross)

-A shared appetizer pizza (pretty satisfying)

-An odd chicken tapas thing (which I think I don’t like) and

-Shared steak with French fries and ravioli for the main course.

Not too shabby.

My qualm with One has nothing to do with the food, but rather the music level, which is so absurdly high you’d think you were eating in the middle of a concert or club, which essentially, you are. Promoter dinners take place at 10 or 10:30 since everyone has to be in the club around midnight. One, which doubles as a bar (hence the importance they be perceived as ‘trendy’) starts cranking up the volume to make the place feel like a discotheque at around the same time the promoter tables are sitting down to eat. You therefore often find yourself in the completely surreal experience of eating in silence with thirteen other people, listening to deafeningly loud party music. Carrying on a conversation is an impossibility and on my last visit, the unthinkable happened.

At 11:30 One went black. Black as in they turned all the lighting off, even in the dining area. The restaurant was darker than the inside of your average club, because at least your average club has fancy strobe machines and an expensive lighting system. Literally, none of us could see. Not each other. Not our food. It was like some creepy horror movie in which you suddenly find yourself at a vampires banquet in a dungeon.

I thought the whole thing was a joke and waited for them to play ‘Thriller’ and then turn the ambiance lighting back up – but no. It was a big finger in the face to anyone who was still eating, and even the non-promoter diners seemed pretty weirded out. I mean, this is New York. A lot of people sit down to dinner at 11:30pm. And I understand that One likes to think of itself as a lounge and therefore wants to create a party atmosphere to sell drinks to wasted people in ASAP, but why then bother having a restaurant?

More nightlife mysteries, unsolved.

Saturday night I dressed up as if I were going to the Oscars since a friend of mine was having a black tie themed birthday party. I’ve written before about my strong dislike of costume requirements when going out. Isn’t being a girl with a thimble size closet, pathetic salary, trying to look modelesque in one of the most fashion forward cities in the world hard enough without additional complications?!

So usually I pooh-pooh events that require I waste extra brain cells figuring out how to not look not like a moron while also incorporating a theme like 80s, Egyptian or toga. Yet when the invitation for a black tie birthday party rolled around, I squealed in delight like an over-sugared child. Practically all women have a collection of prom / bridesmaids / wedding / opera gowns which we’ve only got to cavalier around in once. Any opportunity to debut them once again should be taken advantage of.

This story would have ended swimmingly if New York nights weren’t so utterly unpredictable. My initial plans for the evening ended up being hijacked and I found myself on a completely different social trajectory than a priorly anticipated.

Translation: I never made it to my themed birthday party uptown and was dressed in black tie all night for no reason.

This fashion mistake however, has a happy ending. While I remained bitter about detouring from my initial plan, the group of friends who kidnapped me insisted we go eat dinner at La Esquina. I’d munched on late-night tacos at this joint many times, but never gotten there early enough to consume an official meal at their secret, underground, overhyped restaurant.

All the fabulous rumors about the place proved true.

Once the restaurant’s makeshift bouncer radios down and gives you the go-ahead, you snake down a dark staircase and long corridor, until walking through the kitchen. The light is blinding and pots and pans clatter. Then you enter an underground space that clearly got an M.B.A. in ambience. It’s dim, candles glow, a fireplace crackles, the walls are gray and stone but unlike many restaurants that go for this theme, La Esquina didn’t feel like a Medieval dungeon.

I know technically this place is considered “over,” but to me, the guests looked swankier than most of the people I see on your average night out. Going to a place like this isn’t really about the food, but what I consumed was delicious anyway and the service was above average. Best of all, with the seductive lighting and underground yet elegant feel, La Esquina is one of the few places we could’ve gone where despite the fact that I was dressed to sing a solo at Lincoln Center, I fit in quite perfectly. This joint seem to encapsulate what’s great about New York. While everything’s superficial, nothing is as it truly appears. The outside of La Esquina looks like a dumpy diner.

The inside is mysteriously unexpected: A place where you could see anyone, anything could happen and you feel trendy in both a ball down and ripped jeans.

Rumors are out that Serge Becker is opening La Esquina in Miami at the Mondrian Hotel and Residences on a sunny, seaside, modern terrace - a venture that could not be more different from his current restaurant. How can both these institutions even share the name La Esquina? I guess we’ll find out. In the meantime, I’m grateful places like this exist in Manhattan so that even a foolish girl accidentally wearing an evening gown doesn’t have to stick out like a sore thumb.

Against better judgment, Saturday night I consumed bourbon-gin-tequila-gin in that order. Why you make ask? No particular reason. It’s in fact nights when nothing special’s going on that one allows alcohol itself to be the centerfold activity. I landed at a restaurant/bar on 6^th street and Avenue A named ‘Via Delle Zoccolette’ which specializes in Venetian cuisine, seafood, and locking patrons inside at 4 AM for after hours until dawn. The theme of the evening was ‘lingerie party.’ As my male friend noted however, like most lingerie parties, the only ones who took the lingerie part seriously were gay men and women who should in fact, never be out in public in lingerie. Ah well.

This didn’t put a damper on the evening. For an Italian clubhouse the crowd was quite eclectic with Moroccans, Jersey girls, folks decked out in S&M gear and best of all – a magician. Surveying the thinning crowd at 4 AM…

We noticed a lone Guido passed out in the restaurant corner:

To which we proclaimed, “Well, a party’s not really a party without someone passed out in a corner.” I nodded my alcohol-abused brain in silent agreement, accepting the universal truth of this statement. It later got me thinking a party’s also not really a party without:

A drum / sax player

A lost credit card, jacket or earring

A body so sticky from champagne / liquor spillage that you’ve become adhesive

Feet so sore that heels get discarded

At least one Red Hot Chili Peppers song

Waking up with mystifying bruises

That one person who falls off the Go-Go dancing platform

Throwing ice

Someone passed out in the corner

A random girl in too-tight clothes dancing on an elevated area

Those three tools wearing sunglasses at night

An acute sense that you should’ve left twenty minutes ago

A brawl

Two enraged security guards

Someone who thinks they know you constantly whispering in your ear

Insanely slippery floors

A patron trying to take control of the DJ booth

Feel free to add on.

Tomorrow: Craziness at Mansion.

Miss Model Behavior’s the new nightlife writer for theBlaqlist.com. Feel free to post any nightlife comments or questions on our forum or contact her at MissModelBehavior@theBlaqlist.com