Hello everyone, my name is Ian and I hope you are enjoying this website!!! My goal is to produce a website that takes snapshots of the best of the best restaurants, bars and gourmet market places. Instead of an endlessly long listing as can be found in Zagats or CitySearch, I provide the best of the best. Each place has been personally visited by myself or one of my staff and all restaurants/ bars have been researched online using various sources (ie - multiple reviews online read; cross reviewed with Zagats, NY Magazine, Time Out New York, NY Times). Essentially, my site is a summary of the best places found throughout all review sources.
I use Zagat's system of rating places for restaurants though I maintain my own ratings.... so they often are similar but do not always match. I hope you visit the Top 10 of New York page as well and let me know what you think. Within each category, the restaurants/ bars are listed in GEOGRAPHIC ORDER within the neighborhood. This is explained on the intros to the page. The idea is you can search by a cuisine and still have a geographic listing.
Long before VH1 and other organizations started preparing 'lists' for every topic under the sun (example - VH1's Top 100 songs of all time) I was doing the same. I have always been addicted, to a degree, to information. To knowing at least a little something about every topic I can think of. Therefore, in addition to the Restaurant and Bar guides - which will no doubt drive this website, I plan on adding dozens and dozens of Lists and information on various topics I have researched. Most of this is merely my opinion and I encourage feedback about any topic on this website.
About me- I am 37 years old, grew up in Bronxville, New York. Moved to Raleigh when I was 12 for high school and later attended the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill where I was a history & political science major. I went to Law School in Boston and as an attorney have worked for John Hancock Financial, Goldman Sachs, UBS, CSFB, Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America and now Barclays. I moved back to New York in 2000 where I have gone full throttle reviewing bars and restaurants in my spare time ever since (3-4 days a week after work and on the weekends). Besides the website, I love to travel- especially to my family's home town of Montreal, I love to play tennis or really any non-ice/snow related sport, and I love to read and explore all the great towns, villages and beach resorts the northeast has to offer.
I WANT FEEDBACK!!!
*Tell me if your favorite restaurant or bar is missing.
*Tell me if something has closed... it is hard to keep up perfectly with all closings though I try.
*Tell me if you disagree with the Top 10s. Tell me what to add....
*Tell me how I can make this site better.
*Tell me your ideas on how to advertise and get the word out about this site!