Restaurants

Okay, I'm a bit prejudiced, but, I am sure that New York is the best restaurant town in the country, and maybe the top food destination in the world. In Boston, you think of seafood; New Orleans, Creole and Cajun, Paris and Rome -- you get what you expect you would get. But you cannot define a specific "local food" of New York because there really isn't any -- the city is an amalgamation of global cuisines that you won't find anywhere else. And this amazing variety ranges from hole-in-the-wall ethnic joints to the most hallowed (and wallet-draining) temples of food. One thing you will not do in New York: Go hungry.

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 or check websites for the most up-to-date news. And, in these hard economic times, I've had to say goodbye to some places listed in previous editions; the business lunch is an endangered species, and the result is a loss of some very good restaurants.

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 if you 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 always call ahead 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 30 days in advance, so if you want to eat at a hot restaurant at a popular hour -- Saturday at 8pm, say, at Aquavit -- be sure to mark your calendar and start dialing 30 days prior at 9am. If you're booking a holiday dinner, call even earlier, or head to OpenTable.com as soon as you decide on the date of your dinner.

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. 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 him or her -- a well-connected concierge can often get you into hot spots that might otherwise be booked.

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.

Is that Table Open? -- OpenTable (www.opentable.com) allows you to book a reservation -- and get an instant confirmation -- over the Web at about 150 restaurants throughout Manhattan (and in more than 20 other cities in the U.S. and Canada). You may need to hold the reservation with a credit card. 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 8.75% 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 Souces 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 readers' 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 several 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.

Foodies Love Restaurant Week! -- Restaurant "Week" is a bit of a misnomer: the economic downturn in 2009 saw it become Restaurant "Month" in the winter, and the summer "week" was extended through Labor Day. Week or month, it's a welcome time when, twice a year, in winter and summer, some of the best restaurants in town offer three-course prix-fixe meals at almost affordable prices. Restaurant Week began as a one-off in 1992 to welcome delegates to the Democratic National Convention (with the price of a meal $19.92). A hit with New Yorkers as well as visitors, it's become a much-loved tradition, as foodies get a chance to eat at some of the higher-end restaurants in town without breaking the bank. (It's a tradition that's caught on in other cities, too, from Atlanta to San Diego). These days, at lunch, the deal is $24.07 (as in 24/7), while dinner is $35. More than 230 restaurants participated in the summer version of Restaurant Week in 2009, all over town and in all styles of cuisine, including star venues like Aquavit, Bar Breton, Porter House New York and Rouge Tomate (all reviewed in this chapter). Call tel. 212/484-1222 for info, or visit www.nycvisit.com.

New in NYC This Year

The life of a New York city restaurant is generally a short one. And the recent recession has made it even tougher to keep a restaurant open, much less successful. Still, there are those success stories out there and the majority have, as of this writing, survived.

Possibly the best New York City comfort food is pizza, and maybe as a reaction to hard times, an abundance of new, very good pizzerias opened since the previous edition of this book.

Jim Lahey, the creator of the mouthwatering breads of Sullivan Street Bakery, joined the pizza party by opening Co. Pizzeria (230 Ninth Ave., at 24th St.; tel. 212/243-1105) to rave reviews.

Cousins Sal Basille and Francis Garcia made the journey from their home borough to Manhattan via the Staten Island Ferry, to open Artichoke Basille Pizza (328 E. 14th St., btw. First and Second aves.; tel. 212/228-2004), and after sampling a slice, we are very glad they made the trip.

The wood-burning oven heats up to 1,000°F and almost always guarantees a perfect, crispy crust at Tonda, where the pizzas are engineered by "Maestro Pizzaiolo" Michele Sceral of Naples (235 E. 4th St., at Ave. B; tel. 212/254-2900).

Neapolitan pizza is also the specialty of Keste Pizzeria (271 Bleecker St., btw. John and Cornelia sts.; tel. 212/243-1500), where the pizzas are certified by the Associazone Pizzaiouli Napoletana.

Italy was not only represented by pizza in New York the past year, but some of the most highly rated new restaurants also happened to be Italian, including Scarpetta (355 W. 14th St., btw. Eighth and Ninth aves.; tel. 212/691-0555), helmed by chef Scott Conant who won raves at L'impero.

And where L'impero used to reign, chef Michael White, who helped launch Fiamma to fame back in the day, now rules the kitchen of Convivio at 45 Tudor City Place (tel. 212/599-5045), with superb results.

Another chef who moved from one success (Gilt) to an even bigger one, Corton (239 W. Broadway, btw. Walker and White sts.; tel. 212/219-2777), is Paul Liebrandt. At Corton, though, the accent is French, not Italian, but no one is complaining.

The Frankies (Costronovo and Falcinelli) of Frankie's Spuntino 457 in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, continued to expand their empire. In the winter of 2009, Frankie's 17 (17 Clinton St., btw. Houston and Stanton sts.; tel. 212/253-2303) opened an adjacent dining room, helping to ease the crush. And in Brooklyn, the duo opened a bar, restaurant, and grocery/butcher called Prime Meats next to Frankie's 457 at 465 Court St. (tel. 718/254-0327).

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 West Village, I like to swing by Cowgirl (519 Hudson St., at W. 10th St.; tel. 212/633-1133; www.cowgirlnyc.com; Subway: 1 to Christopher St.) for a frozen blood-orange margarita (served in a Mason jar) or the "Bible Belt" (sort of a bourbon margarita), especially at happy hour, and enjoy some not-too-expensive Tex-Mex-style snacks or entrees (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 back 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).

In often-expensive (and sometimes snippy) Chelsea, I enjoy the scrumptious, reasonably priced food and the cute, charming staff at Pad Thai, 114 8th Ave. (at 16th St.; tel. 212/691-9266; www.padthaibox.com/pad_thai). The generic name belies a lovely little restaurant (one of five run by the same owners, serving traditional Thai food in Manhattan), beautifully decorated, with French doors that open onto the sidewalk in good weather. There's a well-chosen menu of noodles, soups, salads, and entrees, none of which are much over $10, and lunch and dinner "box" specials. I try to swing by for happy hour, when it's $2 off all drinks, including my favorite frozen mango-lime margarita.

-- Kathleen Warnock