Turtle Bay is the stretch of Midtown East roughly between 43rd and 53rd Streets, east of Lexington, with the United Nations sitting on its river edge and Tudor City tucked up on its own little bluff. During the day it belongs to offices and diplomats. By 7pm most of those people have gone home, and what's left is a set of restaurants with actual elbow room on a Friday night.
That's the case for eating down here instead of staying up in the 60s. Walk out our door on East 62nd Street, go half a block to Second Avenue, and turn south. Ten minutes gets you to 55th. Fifteen gets you to 49th. It's flat the whole way and the avenue is wide, so it's an easy walk even in January.
A few honest notes before the list. Turtle Bay is not a food destination the way the West Village or the Lower East Side is, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. What it has is a deep bench of solid, unfussy rooms that have been open for decades, plus two or three genuinely excellent kitchens. It also empties out on weekends, which cuts both ways: easy tables, quieter blocks, and a couple of places that shorten their weekend hours. Call ahead on a Sunday.
We've put walk times from East 62nd Street next to each one. Everything here is also close to Grand Central if you're heading out of town the same night.