"World Class Restaurants, Great Park " a New York City Travel Page by nicolaitan

NYC restaurants deliver a quality of excellence simply not available in suburbs and with the possible exceptions of south Florida and Washington DC unparalleled on eastern seaboard. Read and enjoy.

I have tried to select restaurants at which we have eaten several times and which are not usually frequented by out-of-towners, somewhat more of a New York City atmosphere.

Itallian restaurants predominate on this list for several reasons. First, it seems like every block in the Upper East Side has (at least) one that is quite good. The bad ones are out of business. Second, Italian is a safe cuisine when eating in a group - the broad menus will generally allow everyone to find something. Lastly, most of these are upscale and while still "Italian" offer something unique or a different way of interpreting the same menu. While some may offer the traditional pizza, pasta, and cheese-covered meats with red sauce, most won't even on request. And many of the remaining items tend to be unique so that the places are Italian only in name only.

Central Park, 843 acres of greenery and water features, occupies some of the most expensive real estate in the world. It is the first landscaped park in the United States. Newspaperman William Cullen Bryant was the first public figure to call for a park in the mid 1840's, but the major impetus derived from wealthy merchants and real estate owners who wished to emulate major European cities. Foremost among these was a "merchant prince" Robert Mintum and even more forcefully his wife Anna Mary. New York City was developed to only 34th Street in the 1850's, so the New York State legislature authorized the city, by right of eminent domain, to use the land between what would become 59th Street between 5th and 8th Avenues north to the level of first 105th and then 110th Street for the park. The area was swampy and featured large rock formations, therefore unsuitable for other development.
The "Greensward" plan of park superintendant Frederick Law Olmstead and British architect Calvert Vaux has been called visionary. Thousands of immigrant laborers worked for several decades fulfilling this plan, in which everything is artificial. Even the stream flowing through the Ramble is totally faux, with water flow controlled by a simple faucet. A remarkable feature is the four traffic crossroads submerged 8 feet below ground level and hidden from view almost in entirety. The first southernmost section of the park opened in the late 1850's.
Several times over the last 150 years, the park has fallen into disrepair, but on each occasion, funds and interested individuals have recreated the splendor of this remarkable park, one of the world's greatest. Foremost among these were Mayors Fiorello La Guardia in the 30's with his parks commissioner Robert Moses and John Lindsay in the 70's. Beginning in 1980, a private organization called the Central Park Conservancy overlooks the management of the park and contributes more than half of its budget.