Restaurants

Attention, foodies: Welcome to your mecca. Without a doubt, New York is the best restaurant town in the country, and one of the finest in the world. Other cities might have particular specialties, but no other culinary capital spans the globe as successfully as the Big Apple.

New Yorkers can be fickle. One moment a restaurant is hot, the next it's passé. So, restaurants close with a frequency we wish applied to the arrival of subway trains. Always call ahead.

But there's one thing we all have to face sooner or later: Eating in many of the more high profile restaurants in New York isn't cheap. Wherever you're from, particularly if you hail from the reasonably-priced American heartland, New York's restaurants will seem expensive. Yet good value abounds, especially if you're willing to try ethnic cuisine (including types you may not have had before), and venture beyond tourist zones into such neighborhoods as Chinatown, Harlem, Upper Manhattan, the East Village, the upper Upper West Side, and the boroughs. I've included inexpensive restaurants in every neighborhood, including some of the city's best-kept secrets, so you'll know where to get good value for your money no matter where you are in Manhattan.

Reservations

Reservations are always a good idea in New York, and a necessity for popular restaurants if your party is bigger than two. Do yourself a favor and call ahead as a rule of thumb so you won't be disappointed. If you're booking dinner on a weekend night, it's a good idea to call a few days in advance if you can.

Call far ahead for any special meal you don't want to miss -- a month in advance is a good idea. Most top places start taking reservations exactly 30 days in advance, so if you want to eat at a hot restaurant at a popular hour -- Saturday at 8pm, say, at Chanterelle -- be sure to mark your calendar and start dialing 30 days prior at 9am. If you're booking a holiday dinner, call even earlier.

But if you didn't call well ahead and your heart's set on dinner at BLT Market or Buddakan, don't despair. Often, early or late hours -- between 5:30 and 6:30pm or after 9pm -- are available, especially on weeknights. And try calling the day before or first thing in the morning, when you may be able to take advantage of a last-minute cancellation. Or go for lunch, which is usually much easier to book without lots of advance notice. If you're staying at a hotel with a concierge, don't be afraid to use them -- they can often get you into hot spots that you couldn't get into on your own.

But what if they don't take reservations? Lots of restaurants, especially at the affordable end of the price continuum, don't take reservations at all. One of the ways they keep prices down is by packing people in as quickly as possible. Thus, the best cheap and midprice restaurants often have a wait. Again, your best bet is to go early. Often you can get in more quickly on a weeknight. Or just go, knowing that you're going to have to wait if you head to a popular spot; hunker down with a cocktail at the bar and enjoy the festivities around you.

Make Reservations on the 'net -- OpenTable (www.opentable.com) allows you to book a reservation -- and get an instant confirmation -- over the Web at about 150 restaurants throughout Manhattan. You'll also find that an increasing number of restaurants offer online reservations through their own websites.

Smoking Policy

You cannot light up in any restaurant in the city. Some restaurants entice smokers with back gardens or patios where smoking is permitted, but otherwise, you'll have to step out to the sidewalk (or "Bloomberg Lounge") for a cigarette. Some restaurants provide benches, chairs, and ashtrays, but it gets mighty cold out there in the winter.

Tipping

Tipping is easy in New York. The way to do it: Double the 8.375% sales tax and voilà, happy waitstaff. In fancier venues, another 5% is appropriate for the captain. If the wine steward helps, hand him or her 10% of the bottle's price.

Leave $1 per item, no matter how small, for the checkroom attendant.

More Sources for Serious Foodies

Of course, New York has far more fabulous dining than I have room to discuss here -- although the listings below are enough to keep you fat and happy for a year, much less the length of a vacation. But if you'd like a wider selection, a few good sources are available online or from your local bookstore.

Your best online sources are the online arm of the weekly New York magazine (www.nymag.com), which also features a daily food blog; New York Today (www.nytoday.com), the New York Times's arts and lifestyle site, where you can access a database of the paper's stellar restaurant reviews; and the Village Voice (www.villagevoice.com), especially for the cheap-eats reviews by Robert Sietsema. For a good online source with reader's reviews and menus, try www.menupages.com, which has over 6,000 menus online.

Without a doubt, the best online source for the serious foodie is www.chowhound.com, a national website with message boards in local areas, including New York, where you can make an inquiry about a certain restaurant, type of food, location, and so on, and within a few hours, you might have five or more informative responses.

The Zagat Survey, which has made a name for itself rating restaurants based on extensive diner surveys, maintains a searchable database of city restaurants at www.zagat.com, so if you're willing to do your research before you leave home (or if you're toting a laptop), there's no need to acquire a hard copy of the no-frills guide. They do, however, charge a fee to access the online information. At press time, a year's subscription of Zagat online was $24.95 and a 30-day subscription was $4.95.

The slick weekly Time Out New York has an "Eat Out" section that always includes listings for TONY's 100 Favorite Restaurants in every issue, as well as coverage of new openings and dining trends. Weekly New York magazine also maintains extensive restaurant listings in its listings section at the back of the magazine.

Old Friends

New York has many restaurants that are considered institutions; places that have been around forever and are known throughout the world. When you think of classic New York restaurants that have survived for decades, you might think of the Carnegie Deli, the Grand Central Oyster Bar, or the Peter Luger Steakhouse. But there are countless lesser-known restaurants that can also be considered New York institutions. You may not have heard of them, but those of us who live here know about them. The menus remain pretty much the same; not succumbing to the ever-changing food trends, the service is usually old-school; turnover is low, and your waiter will probably recognize you from your last visit, which might have been a year or two earlier. At these places, it's not about the quality of the food, which will most likely not be four-star, it's more about the familiar. And there is always something comforting about the familiar.

I first experienced Chinatown's Wo Hop, 17 Mott St., between Worth and Mosco streets (tel. 212/962-8617), established in 1938, when I was in college. Of course it had to be cheap, and you couldn't find a cheaper restaurant in New York. It was open 24 hours -- I have fond memories of dining late at night and then ascending the stairs from the subterranean restaurant to witness a sunny dawn; portions were huge and the food was dense. Time has stood still at Wo Hop, and though the prices have gone up, it's still one of the cheapest eateries in the city, still open 24 hours, and still dishing out huge portions of dense food. Here you'll find those Chinese-American classics you might remember from your youth: egg drop soup, chow mein, egg foo young, and subgum (bonus points to anyone who knows what "subgum" means) vegetables. And though most of the food here is heavily battered and swimming in corn-starch-thickened "brown" sauces, either oyster or black bean, there is no denying Wo Hop's comfort level.

At around the same time I discovered Wop Hop, I was introduced to Vincent's Clam Bar, 119 Mott St., at Hester Street (tel. 212/226-8133; www.originalvincents.com), a few blocks up in Little Italy. At the time, there was still a remnant of what Little Italy used to be that is now gone. But Vincent's has been around since 1904, and though, like the rest of Little Italy, there is a touristy, theme-restaurant atmosphere to it, where else can you actually still order that old Italian-American favorite, scungilli? Like the shrinking Italian presence in Little Italy, scungilli (sliced conch) has practically disappeared from the menus of Italian restaurants. Here they pile it so high on top of your linguine that if you are able to eat it all, you just might begin to understand why its demand has dwindled. Vincent's tomato sauce is unique and tastes exactly how I remember it from my first visit; rich and tomato-paste-thickened. It comes in three flavors: sweet, medium, and hot. But beware: The hot is fiery, and the best way to experience it is with a semistale biscuit and as an accompaniment to fried seafood.

I admit, I'm a relative newcomer to El Faro, 823 Greenwich St., at Horatio Street (tel. 212/929-8210; www.elfaronyc.com), the oldest Spanish restaurant in New York, which will celebrate its 82nd birthday in 2009. But one visit and you will feel like you are a regular and longtime friend of the Lurgis family, who have owned the restaurant since 1959. Maybe you'll get to sit in what was writer James Baldwin's favorite corner table -- the restaurant is mentioned in his biography -- or one of the tables off the bar, possibly the one where a resident ghost is rumored to occasionally sit. The menu features dishes brought from Spain that are now familiar, such as paella a la Valenciana, shrimp al ajillo, and mariscada (mixed seafood) with green sauce. All this is complemented with El Faro's potent signature sangria, also known as "truth serum."

We all know how hard it is to make it on Broadway and to make it as a pretheater restaurant and survive for almost 50 years is a significant feat. But that's what Chez Napolean, 365 W. 50th St, between 8th and 9th Avenues (tel. 212/265-6980; www.cheznapolean.com) has done. Located in the shadow of Worldwide Plaza, the Bruno family, led by matriarch "grandmere" Marguerite, have run Chez Napolean since 1960, serving traditional gallic cuisine. The presentation and preparation of the restaurant's coq au vin and the beauf bourguignon remain today exactly as it was before Marguerite was a "grandmere."

People ask me for recommendations for a "real deal" diner in New York. My answer is always: Eisenberg's Coffee Shop, 174 Fifth Ave., at 22nd Street (tel. 212/675-5096). This old-world luncheonette has been dishing up the same eggs/bacon/burgers/sandwiches since 1929, at pretty much the same prices -- adjusted slightly for inflation, of course. The waiters and cooks seemingly have been working at Eisenberg's since the Eisenhower era. More likely than not, you'll be greeted with a growled "Hiya, sweetheart," or a gravelly "What'll it be, love?" If a tuna sandwich were on a "Best of" list, Eisenberg's version would win. Feel a little run down? A bowl of Eisenberg's matzo-ball soup will perk you up. Or sit at the counter and order an egg cream with real, from-the-bottle, seltzer.

Where the Editor Eats . . .

After a long day of shepherding Frommer's Travel Guides from manuscript to publication, this editor can use a good meal, a stiff drink, and a kind word. Here are some places where I can find them:

In the East Village, I've been going to Christine's (208 First Ave., between 12th and 13th sts.; tel. 212/979-2810; Subway: L to First Ave.) for a couple of decades now, since I was a little typesetter correcting the spelling in gun and hairstyle magazines. The prices haven't gone up much, but it's a lot spiffier than it used to be. The waitresses are still the same bored, pretty eastern European women, the mushroom barley soup is still awesome, and you can still get a full dinner with entrees from kielbasa (like my Polish grandma used to make) to chicken livers with mushrooms to stuffed cabbage, all with two veggies for under $10, and pierogies of many varieties (a half-order of four will run you less than $4). (They don't serve alcohol, but there are plenty of bars in the neighborhood). It's open daily from 7am to 11pm.

Over in the West Village, I like to swing by Cowgirl Hall of Fame (519 Hudson St., at W. 10th St.; tel. 212/633-1133; www.cowgirlnyc.com; Subway: 1 to Christopher St.) for a blood-orange margarita or the "Bible Belt" (sort of a bourbon margarita), especially at happy hour, and enjoy some not-too-expensive Tex-Mex-style snacks or dinners (from chicken-fried chicken and chicken-fried steak, to Frito pie, and veggie options). It's a very mixed scene, with local families piling into the dining room, a gayish crowd at the bar, and people who want to hang out in the almost-hidden rec-room-style lounge toward the back, along with an additional dining room. The staff is friendly and sassy and part of the show.

Zuni (598 Ninth Ave., just below 43rd St.; tel. 212/765-7626; www.zuniny.com) is Off-Off-Broadway central; each evening waves of actors, directors, techies, and audiences flood the place from various theaters in the neighborhood. They make the bar a fun scene, with the booths in the back quiet enough to hear yourself talk, but with enough room to tablehop if you see friends. The menu is American/eclectic with a tilt toward Mexican (ask about the quesadilla of the day!). Also recommendable are the sandwiches (grilled salmon with wasabi aioli, an excellent burger) and solid entrees with daily specials and soups. The bar makes good, strong drinks. It's a bargain for the area, which means it'll cost more than a hole-in-the-wall, but a lot less than, say, Esca (which is directly across the street).