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.

The best freshly pulled noodles. My favorite is braised pork with noodles in broth, celery and cilantro add a delicious freshness. Perfect for a cold day.

My favorite place on Bedford Avenue, this bookstore has both new and used titles. If you're patient and look close enough, you can usually find a book that's worth more than they're asking. Not to mention their stellar selection of magazine titles. Good for design, art, photography, sociology, fiction, and everything in between.

I like coming down here with friends when the weather permits and drinking on the beach or on the rocks when the tides come in.

After the full moon, when the tide is the lowest, you'll find a century of fossils from a gone NY, trails of washed-out rainbow colored bottles, a graffitied shipwreck buried by time. Hundreds of years of history written in the sand.