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 New York isn't cheap. The primary cause? The high cost of real estate, which is reflected in what you're charged. 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 neighborhoods like Chinatown, the East Village, Harlem, and even the Upper West Side. Still, 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 virtual necessity 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 Steak 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 mid-price 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 in Advance -- 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 $19.95 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.

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 & 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 $5). And there's a garden in the back where you can eat in the warm weather. (They don't serve alcohol, but there are plenty of bars in the neighborhood).

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; subway: 1 to Christopher St.) for a blood orange margarita and not-too-expensive Tex-Mex-style snacks or dinners (from chicken-fried chicken and chicken-fried steak, to Frito pie, Whisky Pork Chops, a bunch of salads, and veggie options). It's a very mixed scene, with local families piling into the dining room with the kids, a gayish crowd at the bar, and people who just want to hang out in the almost-hidden rec-room-style lounge toward the back. 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).

A little further uptown, Druids (736 Tenth Ave., between 50th and 51st sts.; tel. 212/307-6410; subway: A, C, E to 50th St.) calls itself a "Gourmet Irish Pub." Whatever. It's a really good restaurant (not cheap, but we consider it a good value "splurge") disguised as an Irish pub. The giveaways are the excellent menu that's not afraid of meat dishes (from duck breast to rack of lamb to venison), with a pasta of the day, a solid wine list, and an ambience that's sort of a combo of County Something-or-Other and Downtown, with original art on the walls and various vintage tchotchkes over the bar. There's also a back garden.