It’s a genre Mr. Stulman understands as well as anybody in the city. With 76 seats in the new Freehand hotel on East 23rd Street, Simon & the Whale isn’t one of those. It’s an Army mess hall by the standards of Mr. Stulman’s Happy Cooking Hospitality group. Like all of Mr. Stulman’s places, Simon & the Whale is thick with high-volume conversations when it is full, which is pretty much all night long. Like Jeffrey’s Grocery and Joseph Leonard, its name comes from a relative — in this case, Mr. Stulman’s 6-year-old son, who apparently received an impressive collection of whale-decorated baby gifts.

Source: New York Times May 15, 2018 15:04 UTC