Have you ever had Uzbek food? Me neither until I went to Nargis Cafe. It's kinda like middle eastern food mixed with Ukranian food. It's so good and so inexpensive.

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.

Since September this year, the very best place to hear an authentic voice, keeping Wall Street sharp.

The Bronx Botanical Garden is a place my father and I have been going to since I was a child. Here's a photograph I took of him here. It has hundreds of species of trees and flowers. Sitting in the middle of the Bronx, it's most recognizable as a green oasis from the grays and concrete of city life. 

The New York Earth Room is an interior sculpture by the artist Walter de Maria that has been installed in a loft at 141 Wooster Street since 1977. Go see!