jackson heights in queens is a bonanza of ethnic food and people. it restored my shaken faith in america.

williamsburg is where all the post-hipsters who can afford it choose to live.

oh wait, those places aren't in manhattan.

if you're looking to stay on the island...

soho is like short hills mall, outside, although they have a few more rare (but still cheap) stores like uniqlo and muji.

walk the brooklyn bridge.

il laboratorio del gelato used to be amazing and now it's still pretty good

for an affordable cheese and wine dinner i suggest the bourgois pig

whole foods on houston is nice for its spacious upstairs and suburb-quality grocery experience ;)

grand central market is nice too.

Hey Nic,

Thanks for the suggestions. The Bourgois Pig looks cool. It's not that I'm specifically against traveling off the island, just that it is brief trip this time, so I think Manhattan will be more than enough to occupy my time.

I think you should walk around chinatown for a while. Thats always a good time for me. There are a few cool super cheap dumpling shops (5 for a dollar) at the southern end of Mulberry. My personal favorite is on Moscow street.

it's Mosco.
but i do agree... that place is awesome!
it's just got a sign on it that says "Fried Dumpling"

mmmm....fried dumpling.

You're right... he woulda been walking around for a while trying to find Moscow

He might have ended up in Brighton Beach. oh wait... can't leave Manhattan.

Whole Foods is fundamentally anti-urban and provides its customers with a facile way to make them feel good about themselves. Aside from that, the owner or Whole Foods is an Ayn Rand-loving kook who devises nefarious and bizarre ways to undercut the competition.

Fairway and Zabar's are perfectly good grocery stores that do not condescend to anyone's nostalgic desire to recreate the suburbs in Manhattan.

How is Fairway radically different from Whole Foods? They have high end merchandise and at least for their Red Hook location, you have to drive to it. Seems pretty suburban to me. Other than the fact that Whole Foods opens stores in high-end yuppy locations, I don't see the big difference.

whole foods has done worlds to make lower manhattan livable. rents within a half mile of whole foods have skyrocketed simply because of its presence.

...and this is good?? people will move here to have overpriced suburban groceries? this is obviously written by someone who has no memory of manhattan before whole foods, when it was perfectly livable and then some...

besides which, isn't it odd to send a visitor to manhattan to a national-chain grocery store?

Yes I agree it's strange to suggest Whole Foods to someone visiting New York, but your wacky rant went off on a different tangent altogether.

Ha, well I don't mind, the tangents in this thread have opened up some interesting discussion, so please feel free to continue.

i go to pathmark when i need groceries..there's plenty of places to get food other than whole foods...but i do have to say that some of their innovations are really smart...the whole beer thing..where they have kegs that they pour into bottles that you then return for fairly cheap..

I've shopped at Whole Foods a couple times because it's conveniently located for me, but I generally find it overpriced and pretentious. I have no idea why an out-of-town visitor would want to visit a Whole Foods... You may as well suggest that Synergy checks out Bed Bath & Beyond while he's in town.

I'll go out of my way to shop at the Fairway on 74th Street because it's far cheaper than Whole Foods, has a better selection, and its atmosphere is pure New York. Nothing like being run over by little old Jewish women aggressively pushing shopping carts through an aisle that's barely three feet wide.

Fairway has been a New York institution for decades, and Whole Foods has been known to send their upper management people into Fairway to take notes and photos, presumably so that future Whole Foods stores can be designed to evoke a similar vibe. So far they haven't met much success, and can only manage a pale theme park-style imitation.

Zabar's is great, too, but they're smaller and tend to focus on the upscale gourmet market. Fairway has a nice balance of both gourmet and "normal" groceries.

Alright here's some advice you could use:

Architecture Geek-Out spots:

Rockafeller Center
TWBTA's American Folk Art Museum
Taniguchi's MoMA
Abraham's Austrian Cultural Forum
Rem's Prada Store
The Apple Store on 5th, with the glass cube
Tribeca and Soho street walking, lots of high-end interiors
SANAA's New Museum on the Bowery
Lever House + Seagram Building, which practically face each other
Grand Central Station
Center for Architecture (well catered events, try to attend one)
Storefront for Architecture
Columbia Uni campus and the Tschumi student center
The Cloisters
The Metropolitan Museum
Lincoln Center
Time Warner Center

Places to Eat:

Lombardi's Pizza in Little Italy ($)
Carmine's (American-style italian, but still good) ($$)
Chinatown, see dumpling shops posted above ($)
Per Se ($$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$)
-Try to avoid Mid-town restaurants at all costs, they are typically expensive and low-quality, try street walking in Hell's Kitchen (8th ave and points west) for restaurants if your stuck in that general midtown tourist area.
Most restaurants i've eaten at outside of midtown are generally better and cheaper and in those situations its hard to go wrong, unless you're looking for Mexican food or BBQ.