I Got Locked In A 1950s Prison And Almost Lost My Mind (10/10, Would Be Wrongfully Convicted Again)

 The Escape Game NYC’s Prison Break is billed as their toughest room, and I can confirm it did not come to play.

First, the premise

You didn't do it. Obviously. But you are serving time at Iron Gate, a 1950s prison run by a warden who treats inmates like pawns in his own personal chess match. Today he's offering you a shot at freedom, and you have exactly 60 minutes to take it.

I walked in feeling like the main character of a heist movie. I walked out humbled.

The split-up start is NOT a drill

Most escape rooms ease you in. This one separates your team into two different prison cells right away, so you're solving blind while your friends are on the other side of a wall doing who knows what. Communication becomes a survival skill. I have never yelled "WHAT DOES YOURS SAY?" so many times in a row.

The set design is chef's kiss

Iron bars, striped uniforms, a tiny mirror on the wall, and a stack of books that includes 1984 (the room is not subtle, and I love that for it). It looks and feels like an actual prison. The details held up when I got close, which is the real test of a good set.

The puzzles will test your friendships

The game is rated 9/10 difficulty, and I felt every point of that. You decipher clues, crawl through secret passages, move through a utility hall, and eventually reach the warden's office. Each stage felt like a new level in a video game, and the chess theme gives it a "he's three moves ahead of me" energy that kept me on edge. There's a lot of "wait, are we being dumb?" followed by "oh. OH." Peak group-chat material.

Who should (and shouldn't) book this

✅ Book it if you're a seasoned escape room person who's bored of the beginner stuff, or you want a team bonding activity where everyone has to participate.

❌ Skip it for your first-ever escape room. Start with an easier game, then work your way up to this one.

Prison Break is a fantastic, stressful, brilliantly designed hour that will make you appreciate the people you're trapped with, and also quietly judge a few of them. Bring your most observant friends, and maybe a snack for afterward. You'll need it.

A Trip To Delmonico’s, The Restaurant That Invented Fine Dining In America

 Established in 1837, Delmonico’s remains the oldest restaurant in New York City. It lives in its original building at the intersection of Beaver and William Street in the financial district.

Let's get the history out of the way, because Delmonico's doesn't let you forget it for a second: this place basically invented the modern fine dining. Swiss-Italian brothers Giovanni and Pietro Delmonico opened it in 1837, and it became America's first fine dining restaurant and steakhouse, the first in New York to offer food à la carte, and even the first to print a separate wine list. They were apparently unhappy with the produce at local markets, so they just bought a farm in Brooklyn, basically inventing farm-to-table a century and a half before it became a menu buzzword. It was also the first restaurant where women could dine without a male escort, which in 1800s New York was basically scandalous behavior.

So when you sit down at Delmonico's, you're not just getting dinner: you're sitting in the room that taught rich 19th-century New Yorkers what a "restaurant" even was.

Burrata kicked things off, and the caramelized onion romesco plus chili crisp combo was doing a lot of quiet, confident work: creamy, sweet, with just enough heat to make you sit up straighter.

Yellowtail Crudo came next, delicate and clean, with crispy pearls adding a textural plot twist and the shoyu doing the seasoning heavy lifting without drowning the fish.

Then the mains walked in like they owned the place, which, to be fair, they kind of do. The Lamb Chops with pistachio and caramelized yogurt were tender enough to make conversation briefly stop at the table. And the Irodori Wagyu New York Strip — 14oz of Creekstone Farms Kansas beef — is basically a direct descendant of the Delmonico Steak that made this restaurant famous in the first place. Charred exterior, perfectly pink center, zero regrets.

On the side: Roasted Heirloom Carrots with herb honey butter and toasted hazelnut, and the Delmonico's Potatoes — a crispy potato mille-feuille with crème fraîche and chives that is somehow both a side dish and a personality.

And then, the main event: Delmonico's Original Baked Alaska, created in-house in 1867 and still built from banana gelato, walnut cake, and apricot jam under that signature toasted meringue dome. This isn't a restaurant doing a cute historical throwback. Eating it feels a little like dessert archaeology, except it's also just genuinely, ridiculously good: warm torched meringue giving way to cold gelato is still one of the best temperature tricks in the dessert world, nearly 160 years later.

Delmonico's isn't trying to reinvent itself — it's playing the hits, and the hits still slap. Come for the wagyu, stay for the fact that you're eating dessert in the same culinary lineage as Theodore Roosevelt's childhood dinners.