The Importance of a New York Restaurant Guide

There is a great difficulty involved in creating a New York restaurant guide; there are so many restaurants that nobody can produce an accurate count. The most commonly cited figure of New York restaurants is seventeen to twenty thousand. Eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner at a different restaurant every day would allow you to theoretically finish the task in as little as fifteen years, assuming none of them go out of business and no new ones spring up.

Choosing a great metropolitan eatery can therefore become a matter of opportunity, rather than existence. Any New York restaurant guide lists hundreds of great establishments in dozens of mouth-watering categories. A quick search through the Times may yield some rising stars worthy of consideration, while a copy of the latest Zagat Guide provides a comprehensive list of several thousand establishments favored by a large statistical sampling of local residents. Included among the 2011 Zagat winners is Le Bernardin for best food, Per Se for best service, Maialino for best newcomer, and Gramercy Tavern for most popular.

But the most important consideration isn’t whether some particular restaurant is the best, but whether one can get to it without having to creep through cross-town traffic for six hours or make reservations eight weeks in advance. The whole point of the Empire State experience is to actually experience it, which means diving in and sampling the neighborhood cuisine.

Talk to somebody, anybody, and see what they recommend. Hotel doormen, cabbies, business associates, and friends who live in the city all have an opinion on where to get a great meal. In addition, look up online reviews and see what other tourist or New York natives have to say. Let them serve as a personal guide on the culinary safari through the Big Apple. Discover a secret place of your own. This is far more memorable than queuing up at the latest trendy watering hole. To put it another way, every city offers the same elements of touristy allure, but they also each have a real heart lurking underneath all the glitter. Go native and find out what New York really is all about.