I had been living in Brooklyn Heights for some time and Long Island Restaurant has been closed for as long as I could remember. Then one day, the sign was lit up and not long after the new owners had resurrected the spot with the promise to the previous owners the name and sign never changes. Order "A Martini" from the menu. It's divine. As are the french fries. They're double fried.

The best views on Brooklyn and Manhattan. Forget the sweaty and expensive tourist buses, the ferry is just as much as a subway ride and breathtakingly beautiful. 

Just because everyone knows about it doesn't mean it doesn't deserve more attention. Great food, great service, great movies, great drinks.

When I first moved to New York, enamoured by its parks and museums and design firms and restaurants and bars, I never imagined that there could be much more to its geography than that. How wrong I was. My first drive across the George Washington Bridge was jaw-dropping - the cliffs of New Jersey are astonishingly tall, covered in a dense thicket of trees. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. Drive up 87 to the Catskills or the Adirondacks and you'll witness the Hudson River winding its way through spectacular scenery and unforgiving seasons. Now I can't get enough; just two hours up the road, it's like the city never existed. Perfect recuperation after a long week.

Now in its tenth year, the Division Street restaurant has proven its staying power in a city of amazing eateries. Bacaro’s wine bar and small plates (“cichetti”) are modeled after the “bacaros” of Venice—workingmen’s pubs that serve snacks and small glasses of wine.