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.

This simple Manhattan salt house is shaped like a monumental grain of salt. The Shed is an effort by the city to make even their most utilitarian architecture into unique pieces of art.

Cafe Mogador has been serving modern takes on traditional Moroccan dishes for breakfast, brunch, lunch, and dinner in the East Village since 1983.

What's not to like with a place that has a Sandwich named after Jonah Hill and hand-drawn signs in the window?

Fun bar to drink/dance. Great sound system and rotating roster of Dj's. Tends to get unbearably crowded on weekends so weeknights are the way to go.