While the current trend in noodles may well be ramen, this bafflingly-named Japanese restaurant just ten minutes from my apartment specialises in udon. Unless you are my friend Diego Zambrano it will probably take you several visits to get through all the things you need to try on the menu - the gyoza are otherworldly, the sushi 'tacos' clever enough without being silly. New York has thousands of awful Japanese places; this is not one of them. It's super nice to come in on a Sunday night and eat at the bar next to curmudgeonly old guys barking at each other in Japanese.

Fried chicken. Biscuits. Sausage gravy. Artisanal root beer. House-made pickles.

Empty, but not abandoned, this cavernous Brooklyn loading dock was once considered the largest individual building in the world.

It's a bar with live Jazz music, random furnitures, and bunch of games like pool, ping-pong, chess, and etc. The place is filthy, disorganized, and fun.

Grand Central is big and beautiful and it also periodically hosts free cultural events - poets at typewriters custom-composing poems on demand - or Alvin Ailey dancers performing in Artist, Nick Cave's horse suits!