• Neighborhoods
• Sights
• Restaurants
• Hotels
• Entertainment
• Shopping
• Travel Tips
• Features

Restaurants Overview

Besides satisfying a taste for the finer things in life, restaurants serve Gothamites and visitors in other crucial ways. They're a vital catalyst for exploring the city (the hunt on Museum Mile for a bite before museum-hopping), a communication device ("Let me tell you about this great little Mexican place way uptown"), and a standby of cocktail-party one-upmanship ("What? You haven't been to Per Se yet?!"). Perhaps most important, restaurants serve as extensions of New Yorkers' usually minute kitchens and nonexistent dining rooms.

Restaurants have consistently demonstrated a savvy sensitivity to the financial times, and a wide array of midprice restaurants somehow manages to serve high-end food. Quite a few have devised bargain prix-fixe three-course dinners. All in all, though, prices have remained steady.

Still, New York is about extremes, and the metropolis remains a mecca of the moneyed. So the upswing in thrift-minded diners hasn't stopped new celebrity-chef-driven (and wildly expensive) restaurants such as Thomas Keller's Per Se from opening. Nor has the statewide smoking ban in all indoor public spaces caused more than a mild ripple in restaurant patronage. If anything, more people are dining out as a result of the ban.

So whether you decide to go for a delectable downtown banh mi Vietnamese hero with its surprising counterpoint of flavors and textures, or a prime porterhouse for two with creamed spinach and pommes Lyonnaise at a fancy uptown steak house, note that some of the dishes recommended in the following reviews may not be on the menu you receive when you sit down to eat. Many menus around town are market-driven and seasonal. Use our recommendations as guidelines and you won't be disappointed.