don't let it bother you—he's like that with everybody

    I'm a New Yorker, so it should come as no surprise that I think 

my city is the greatest city in the world. I like living in the city 

where so many of my favorite films take place, where nearly 

every street corner reminds me of some piece of lurid personal or 

criminal history. "Crazy Joe Gallo was shot here . . . Big Paul 

Castellano got whacked there . . . Used to score there . . . That 

place used to be a speakeasy . . . My old methadone clinic . . . 

That used to be an after-hours club . . ." It may not be the most 

beautiful city. It's not the nicest city (though it is, sadly, getting 

nicer). And it's certainly not the easiest city to live in. One minute 

you're on top of the world, and the next—like when you wish to 

light up a smoke at a bar and can't—you're wallowing in misery 

and self-pity, unable to decide between murder and suicide. But 

it is exactly those famously manic highs and lows that make New 

York, and Manhattan in particular, like nowhere else. I mean, 

you can talk London or Paris or Barcelona all you like, but we're 

open all night: I can pick up the phone around midnight and get 

just about anything I want delivered to my apartment: Chinese 

food, Lebanese, sushi, pizza, a video, a bag of seedless hydro, a 

human head. 

    I think I know what I'm talking about here. I've been other 

places. I travel a lot—about eight months out of the year. And 

while I love London, Edinburgh, Dublin, Melbourne, Hanoi, 

Salvador, Saint Petersburg, Tokyo, and Saint Sebastian like old 

friends, I miss my city when I'm away too long. As much as I 

enjoy getting lost, disappearing into another place, another 

culture, another cuisine, there are places and flavors, sounds, 

smells, and sights I begin to yearn for after three or four weeks 

eating fish heads and rice. 

    When people from other cities, planning a trip to New York 

(or the city, as we locals are apt to call it), ask me where they 

should eat, where they should go, where they should drink 

during their stay, they are often surprised at my answers. Sure, 

we have some of the best high-end restaurants in the world here, 

but that's not what I miss when I'm wiping fermented bean paste 

off my chin, or trading shots of bear-bile-infused rice whiskey in 

Asia. When visiting Manhattan one should go for things that we 

do really well and the rest of the world doesn't. 

    Example? Deli. We have it; you don't. Even Los Angeles, with 

no shortage of Jews, can't get it right. For whatever mysterious 

reasons, no city on the planet can make deli like New York deli 

and the first thing I start to miss when away from home too long 

is breakfast at Barney Greengrass, The Sturgeon King, on 

Amsterdam Avenue and Eighty-sixth Street. Sunday breakfast 

at Barney's is one of those quintessential New York things to do: 

a crowded, ugly dining room, unchanged for decades; wobbly 

tables; brusque waiters; generic coffee. But their eggs scrambled 

with dark, caramelized onions and lox, served with a fresh 

toasted bagel or bialy, are ethereal, and the home-team crowd 

of Upper West Siders is about as "genuine New York" as you 

can get. Grab a copy of the Sunday New York Times and a copy 

of the Post, and dig in. If your waiter seems indifferent, don't let 

it bother you—he's like that with everybody. You can buy some 

of the legendary smoked sturgeon or Nova Scotia salmon at the 

counter to take away, but you will surely be committing a sin 

against God if, after breakfast, you neglect to purchase a pound 

of what is far and away the best chopped liver on earth. Hand-

chopped chicken livers, schmaltz (chicken fat), sautéed onions, 

and hard-cooked eggs . . . it's the benchmark to which all others 

should aspire. 

    No visit to New York is complete without a proper pastrami 

sandwich, and New Yorkers will argue over who's got the best 

like they're fighting over Bosnian real estate. But a safe bet is 

Katz's Deli on East Houston for a nearly-as-big-as-your-head 

pile of steaming hot pastrami, sliced paper thin and stacked 

between fresh seeded rye bread. The appropriate beverage is a 

Dr. Brown's cream soda or Cel-Ray. And be nice to your 

waitress; chances are she can kick the shit out of you. 

    Pizza is another subject on which New Yorkers have strong 

opinions. If you feel like humping out to Brooklyn, to Di Fara's, 

you can get the best of the best. But I like the white clam pizza at 

Lombardi's on Spring Street, when I don't feel like getting my 

passport punched for a pie. They serve only whole pies at 

Lombardi's, so if you want to master the manly New York 

art of walking down the street while eating a slice of pizza, you'll 

have to grab one at any of the ubiquitous mainstream joints. Just 

remember: feet slightly apart, head tilted forward and away 

from chest to avoid the bright orange pizza grease that will 

undoubted dribble down. Be aware of the risk of hot, molten 

"cheese slide," which has been known to cause facial injury and 

genital scarring. 

    Everybody has seen Central Park on television, and yes, it is 

dramatic and beautiful, but I love Riverside Park, which runs 

right along the Hudson River from Seventy-second Street up to 

Grant's Tomb. On weekends during warm months, there's a 

large Dominican and Puerto Rican presence, huge picnics with 

radios blaring salsa and soca music, large groups of family and 

friends playing basketball, volleyball, and softball while slow-

moving barges and tankers scud by on the river. 

    Speaking of sports, the West Fourth Street basketball courts 

on lower Sixth Avenue host some of the best nonprofessional, 

street basketball in the world. Professionals have been known to 

drop by—and they get a game, much of it elbows and shoulders. 

A large crowd rings the outer fence three and four deep to watch 

some of the city's most legendary street players. 

    When I've been home for a while and I need to treat myself to 

an expensive spirit-lifting experience, I always think sushi. And 

Yasuda on East Forty-third Street is the place to go for old-

school Edo-style sushi and sashimi, the fish served as it should 

be—near room temperature, the rice still warm and crumbly. I 

always book the omakase (the tasting menu, literally, "you 

decide") on a day when Yasuda serves up sublime, tasty bits 

of screamingly fresh, rare, hard-to-get, flawlessly executed sea-

food. I can spend a whole afternoon there, eating whatever 

comes my way, working my way through every available option: 

mounds of sea urchin roe; top-drawer fatty otoro tuna; sea eel; 

yellowtail; mackerel and the occasional surprise. On a recent visit 

I was served some Copper River salmon roe, before season, 

from the chef's personal stash. If I find myself in the neighbor-

hood late at night, just across the street, through an anonymous 

office building lobby, down a flight of fire stairs to a cellar and 

through a plain door, is Sakagura, a huge, nearly all-Asian late-

night joint with a mammoth selection of sakes and accompany-

ing snacks. Guaranteed to inspire exclamations of "How did you 

find this place?!" among your envious friends. 

    Sneer at hot dogs all you want. A well-made wiener is a thing 

of beauty. Actually, even a bad hot dog can be a beautiful 

thing—if you're eating it at Yankee Stadium washed down with 

a warm, watery beer (as long as the Yanks are winning). I'll go so 

far as to say you will never understand New York, or New 

Yorkers, until you've eaten too many bad hot dogs and drunk 

too much cheap beer at a night game at the stadium. Similarly, 

Rudy's Bar on Ninth Avenue serves terrible hot dogs too. Free 

ones. But ambiance counts for a lot, and after plenty of mid-

afternoon drinks (never go at night) listening to their magnificent 

jukebox, watching the daytime drinkers slump over onto the 

bar, those lightbulb-warmed weenies suddenly seem like a good 

idea. If you want a quality hot dog, however, the best by 

consensus is at the legendary Papaya King on East Eighty-sixth 

Street. Be sure to enjoy your dog with their frothy delicious 

papaya drink—and if you put ketchup on your dog I will fucking
kill you. 

    New York's subway system is certainly not among the best in 

the world, and I miss the full-length graffiti pieces, the tribal 

markings that once made the cars so menacing and evocative of 

classic New York films like Death Wish. But I still love the 

people-watching late at night on the Number 9 or A train. The 

sound of people talking, that gorgeous, jazzlike mix of Brook-

lynese, Spanglish, Noo Yawk; the hard faces New Yorkers put 

on like masks to get through the day. There are, once in a great 

while, magical moments, when united by a shared laugh or 

outrage, passengers will let the veil drop and actually acknowl-

edge each other with a sardonic smile, a shaken head, a caustic 

remark—or like one time, when a deranged drunk was harassing 

a tired-looking woman and the entire car rose up and chased him 

off the train, a momentary united front. 

    For late-night bad behavior, I am a devoted regular at Siberia 

Bar, located on Fortieth Street in Hell's Kitchen, a few doors east 

of Ninth Avenue. There's no sign. Just look for the unmarked 

black doors under the single red lightbulb—and leave your 

conscience at the door. If Satan had a rumpus room, it would 

look a lot like Siberia: squalid, dark, littered with empty beer 

cartons, the ratty furniture stained with the bodily fluids of many 

guilty souls. It's my favorite bar on earth; it has a great jukebox 

of obscure mid-seventies punk classics, and no matter how badly 

you behave at night, no one will remember the next day. The 

crowd is dodgy and unpredictable. You never know who's going 

to be draped over couches upstairs, or listening to live bands in 

the dungeonlike cellar; rock and rollers, off-duty cops, drunken 

tabloid journalists, cast and crew from Saturday Night Live, 

slumming fashionistas, smelly post-work chefs and cooks and 

floor staff, kinky politicos, out-of-work bone-breakers, or nod-

ding strippers. It's heaven. 

    If I gotta put on a tie or a jacket, the food better be damn 

good—and the food at Scott Bryan's Veritas on East Twentieth 

Street is always worth struggling into a shirt with buttons. It's 

also got the best wine list and one of the most knowledgeable 

sommeliers in New York. (Not that it matters to me; I usually 

drink vodka.) Scott's a friend, so I often sit at the bar and snack 

off the appetizer menu, but his braised dishes and seafood mains 

are always exceptionally good. Eric Ripert's Le Bernardin on 

West Fifty-first Street is, in my opinion, the best restaurant in 

New York, but then Eric is also a pal, so don't trust me. (The 

Zagats, Michelin, and the New York Times, however, are 

similarly enthusiastic.) Le Bernardin is my default special-event 

destination—even though Eric busts my balls fiercely every time 

I dine there: "What are you doing here? You sell-out! This ees 

not your kind of place! What ees happening to you? You've 

changed, man. You used to be cool!" 

    The ultimate New York dining experience, however, may not 

be in a restaurant at all. For me, it's a rainy, lazy night at home in 

my apartment. I'll smoke a fat spliff, lay out some old news-

papers on the bed, and call out for Chinese. I'll eat directly out of 

that classic New York vessel, the white cardboard takeout 

container, and watch a rented movie from nearby Kim's Video. 

Kim's specializes in hard-to-find exploitation, genre, cult, and 

art-house favorites, organized by director, so I can say, give me a 

Dario Argento, an early John Woo, Evil Dead II, The Con-

formist, or that Truffaut film where the two guys are both 

fucking Jeanne Moreau. Food never tastes better. 

 

[Anthony Bourdain {1956-2018}, from "Sweet" in 'My Manhattan', from The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones]