Picture New York City and you’re probably thinking about Midtown
Time Square, the Empire State Building, Grand Central….
This is Midtown Manhattan
Tourist flock to it, while locals often try - and fail - to avoid it
But there is more to this part of town than tourist traps and traffic congestion
Midtown has been electrified by a bolt of Brooklyn Hip and Wall Street money.
Maybe it's time you took a second look
Midtown is everything between 14th street and Central Park South
It is the world’s largest central business district
It also has some of the most expensive real estate
And it doesn’t get any ritzier than Fifth Avenue which commands the world's highest
retail rents
But if there is one building more responsible than any other for midtown’s success
it's this one
Built in 1913, Grand Central Terminal helped sparked a boom in construction that made Midtown
the center of American capitalism
This audacious building is used by more than one million people a week.
A century after it was built it has only now reached capacity. That’s future proofing
New York embraces eating out. There are over 45 thousand restaurants in the city
It would take 125 years to eat in every one - not saying your should
Here in Midtown - the restaurant scene is embracing change
A number of Brooklyn institutions have jumped the river
Roberta’s pizza started on the other side of the East River in 2008 but their second
outpost is based in Urbanspace food hall - smack dab in Midtown
You could be fooled into thinking this is Williamsburg not Park Avenue
Another Brooklyn import is Ichiran, the Japanese ramen chain whose first US restaurant opened
in Bushwick in 2016 .
Here you can sit with a group or…. in splendid isolation in one of the so called ‘flavour
concentration booths’. Very serious
But if you want to swap Brooklyn cool for something a bit more luxury
we've got the spot
The Office is an intimate speakeasy offering pre-Prohibition style cocktails and a food
menu to match
You’ll find it hidden away on the 35th floor of the super swanky Mandarin Oriental
This is one of the most expensive hotels in New York, rooms start at $1000 a night
But there are 113 other hotels in Midtown offering plenty of choices
So forget the old wisdom that the excitement is basically, anywhere but Midtown
. This part of Manhattan has something new and
exciting to offer, whether it’s high end or rough-and-ready.