To quote the former New York Times food columnist William Grimes from his book, “Appetite City”, “New York is the greatest restaurant city the World has ever seen”. Paris has better French restaurants, Madrid better Spanish restaurants, and Tokyo better Japanese restaurants, but no city offers such a variety of national cooking styles as New York. According to city records, New York’s 24,000 restaurants feed each of the 8.5 million New Yorkers and visitors an average of once a week. That’s a lot of Eat Manhattan diners!
So many great places to eat, and a few truly exceptional ones. We hit the streets to find our four favorite Eat Manhattan spots in this eating megacity.
Cafe China
Open Cafe China’s doors on 37th street and you step into Shanghai circa 1930. Vintage movie posters, antique typewriters, and old books all conspire to relieve your mind of the modern world outside.

Cafe China is one of a new wave of Chinese restaurants that has finally shed the curious history of American-Chinese food, leaving behind the days of “General Tso” chicken and enormous book-like menus, to focus on Chinese food — you know, the kind of food they actually eat in China.