"For lunch, which, for the nature of my business, is my favorite time to go around to interesting and off the beaten path restaurants in New York City, a great place with counter service on 11th St. and 2nd Ave. is Momofuku Noodle Bar -- great soup and a major hang out for chefs and people in the restaurant business. Barbuto, in the West Village, is lots of fun. If you like Italian, Lupa in the Village is definitely one of the best. For lobster rolls, try Mary's Fish Camp – fantastic, and Fatty Crab on Hudson St. – funky place, great food. I love these places because aside from great food, they represent the most innovative ideas in restaurants. So, if you have two or three hours during the late morning / early afternoon, you can try a few of the places one after the other, like we New Yorkers do."
[more]Pino Luongo, Restaurateur & Author
Lost?
Here's a little guide to orient you if you find yourself in Manhattan without a map.
If you're lost in Central Park: Follow a path. Almost all the paths will lead to the Loop, a 6-mile drive that has foot, bike, skating, and sometimes car traffic on it. It traces an imperfect oval inside the park boundaries: from nearly any point, you're only a short ways from the outside of the park. The lampposts, if you look closely, have small metal signs on them which tell you the cross street at your latitude: "100-2" is the 2nd lamp on the Loop above 100th Street; "67-4" is the 4th lamp above 67th.
If you're lost looking for an address: Addresses project east and west from Fifth Avenue: 20 West 43rd Street (the old home of the New Yorker magazine) is in the block between 5th and 6th Avenues. Westward, the first block is 0-99, the second is 100-199, and so on. ...