Great mid-eastern food in Chelsea/Flatiron/NoMad/whatever you call that area.

I'm a huge Japanophile: if there's one other place I'd like to live, it's Tokyo. I must have been there seven or eight times, most recently just after the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Anyway, EN is a gem on Hudson Street, serving real Japanese cuisine. It turns out that EN is a chain in Japan; there are a lot of branches making lovely bosky food in cosy neighbourhood locations. But their New York incarnation is grand in scale and ambition, with solid, warm interiors (not unlike if the Whitney were a Japanese restaurant, oddly) - a remarkable hybrid of this city, and the other one that I'd love to live in.

Stocks artists’ books and catalogs along with used and rare titles that focus on contemporary art, photography, and classical painting.

Extra Chinese Restaurant. Have the ChongQing Wings if you Dare.

Erie Basin is a really wonderful little shop full of old, creepy and beautiful things, such as Victorian mourning jewelry (some with hair in it), Freemason masks from the 1900's, tiny children's rings from the 1700's, and all kinds of other treasures. It is really as much a museum as it is a store, and all of the items have a haunting and unique aura.