5 Golden Keys for Discovering Perfect NYC Restaurants

If you are planning or taking your New York City vacation one of your top concerns is where to eat. Whether you’re here for one day or two weeks, if you’re staying in a hotel you’ll be dining out every meal. That means you’ll have to decide where to go each and every time you eat, which can be a daunting task in a gargantuan city with over 6000 options. How can you avoid wasting your valuable money and vacation time on poor meals in NYC and instead find the food you really want to eat?

The answer is to invest a little time in efficiently researching which NYC restaurants match your tastes, itinerary, budget and other needs. Here are five keys for swiftly discovering perfect meals every time you eat out in New York City.

Filter Out the Fat

It doesn’t make sense to choose from 6000 restaurants. Even with all the information available online it would be nearly impossible to research every restaurant and make an intelligible decision. One way to reduce your list of possibilities is to use a guide like Zagat’s®. However a big problem with a guide
like Zagat’s® is that if each NYC restaurant is rated by a different set of reviewers then there’s no consistency in opinion from rating to rating. In other words, you could read the ratings for one restaurant, go and love it and then find similar ratings for another restaurant, go and hate it.

Another option is the Free NYC Restaurant Guide; a New York City insider’s time tested treasure trove of favorite restaurants. Discover where New Yorkers go for everything from phenomenal brick oven pizza to perfected fine dining. J. Douglas Cohen uses his 35+ years of native New Yorker experience to help NYC visitors reduce an impossible list of thousands to a refined group of just over fifty selections.

A Little Planning Goes a Long Way

Take some time learn about the things you want to do in the city and where they are located with respect to your hotel. Then ask yourself, "How much time am I willing to travel to see a different part of the city and enjoy a great meal?"

With the information you gather you can then identify NYC restaurants and other eateries that fit into your day. The point is to have an idea about the restaurants in or near the neighborhoods you plan to visit before you head out. You’ll avoid wasting time deciding where to eat when you’re on the go and hunger strikes.

Don’t Get Sucked into Tourist Traps

Millions of tourists pass through New York City every year. Unfortunately there are restaurants that count on this fact to maximize profits without too much concern for serving great food. They combine prime location (like Times Square or the South St. Seaport), great marketing and less than stellar food and service to make oodles of money. They know you won’t be back so why please you if it’s going to cost them more? Sad but true. Think twice before committing to a meal in a highly trafficked tourist neighborhood.

Avoid Chain Restaurants

People who come to New York City and then run to their favorite chain restaurant the first chance they have are missing out on real opportunities to discover much more satisfying and tasty food. By eliminating chain restaurants from your selection base you immediately improve your chances of discovering a new
gastronomic favorite.

Read Menus

In order to identify viable dining possibilities the most important two pieces of information you can have are price and menu. You can find reliable price and menu information online by visiting the web site of each restaurant you consider. But there are problems with this tactic: not every restaurant has a web site, web sites are not necessarily current and the process is too time consuming. How can you discover where to go for accurate price and menu information for NYC restaurants?