After a tango practica one night in Lower Manhattan, a man I enjoy dancing with suggested we go out for a drink. It was a balmy summer night, and so we set out to find a nice place with outdoor space in Noho. Instead we found raging crowds of college students or places with a few tables on a busy sidewalk, already getting ready to pull in the chairs for the night. So we headed to his neighborhood in the East Village, where any restaurants with street seating were not allowing anyone to sit there after 11 pm due to noise rules.

It's sad enough that people in Lower Manhattan pay more for housing and entertainment than we do in Brooklyn. And when escaping their tiny living spaces they have to throw elbows in the narrow restaurants and bodegas. The bars must have a cabaret license for people to dance and there are very few beautiful, laid back gardens where you can get a glass of wine after tango practice.

Just, so, sad.

Strangely, it's still difficult to get Manhattan people to leave the little island, when just a few subway stops away in my neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn we have amazing restaurants with lots of outdoor gardens. And you can dance if you feel like it.

Here's a review of some of the great and (some less-than great) garden restaurants and bars in Williamsburg. Other neighborhoods to come.