Diversity Will Demand Many Bites of Big Apple

For 15 years they’ve been calling it the Big Apple, which is fine. Yet that hardly conveys the virtues and complexities of a scintillating lady with the vivacity of Liza Minnelli, the freshness of Brooke Shields, humor of Lily Tomlin and, when she’s at her very best, the classic beauty of a Catherine Deneuve.

Like most metropolitan areas, it has its problems. Climbing aboard a crowded mid-Manhattan bus with incorrect change for the fare box, we suddenly found half a dozen fellow riders riffling through pockets and purses to help solve our dilemma.

New Yorkers are in fact the most provincial of all humans, taking pride in or defending their town with all the fervor of a Balkan villager. Yet many of us have forebears whose first stop was in New York, moving on to the Hartford Valley as Teutonic toolmakers, Scandinavian wheat farmers to Minnesota, Mediterranean fishermen to Gulf ports, whatever. They all came.

So this is the quintessential American city, an amalgam of the good, bad, wondrous and worrisome in us all.

Here to there: TWA, American, Pan Am and United will get you to JFK, PeoplExpress to Newark, all non-stop, several others with stops. Take a bus from JFK to two stations in Manhattan, cost $8, or one from Newark, cost $4.

Getting around town: Bus or subway both cost $1. Our cab fares around Manhattan averaged $4-$5 with tip.

How long/how much: It’s a city of superlatives: 100,000 hotel rooms, 25,000 restaurants, 150 museums, 12,000 taxis and almost 400 theaters on and off Broadway. Making even a small dent in this behemoth takes at least four days, better a week.

In a town where the average apartment rent is $1,050, and that held down by rigid control in some sections, hotel rooms don’t come cheap. Dining can run from moderate to astronomical, depending on your style.

Getting settled in: The Wellington (7th Avenue at 55th Street; $72 double) has seen better days, but the location is great. Be sure to ask for one of the renovated rooms, others are rather iffy. Informal restaurant with red-checked tablecloths, long, friendly bar. The nearby Shoreham (33 West 55th; $85-$95) has a tiny lobby, same good location, neat and moderate-size rooms. No restaurant, but each room has coffee and tea makers, small fridge.

Near the Guggenheim and Metropolitan museums just east of Central Park, the Wales (1295 Madison Ave.; $50-$60) is a small one with charming lobby: crystal chandeliers, fresh flowers, marble staircase and fireplace. Rooms don’t match the downstairs splendor but they’re comfortable enough. Restaurant popular with locals.

Our own choice has to be the Algonquin (59 West 44th; $111-$118), a warm and revered gathering place that spawned the Algonquin Round Rable in the ‘20s and ‘30s, a witty, stylish, often arrogant and cutting group made up of such as Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, Robert Sherwood, and Harold Ross, founder and editor of the New Yorker.

Walls and a dozen columns of burnished wood, discreet lighting and an arrangement of comfortable furniture give the marvelous lobby the feel of a private club, which it seems to become every afternoon around 5 as the faithful gather for drinks. Lovely rooms, renowned restaurants, a civilized place if ever there was one.

Moderate-cost dining: With more than 3,000 Italian restaurants, plus a sea of others from every country, region and province on earth including Bangladesh, we’ll try to aim you at a few that reflect the flavor and color of the city.

Hunan Garden (1 Mott St. in Chinatown) misses very little of the famous food of that province. Try the heng yang scallops with tree mushrooms, jade and ruby peppers; yo yang pork Hunan style with black bean sauce; shrimp in hot ginger and garlic sauce. There’s an $11.95 house dinner with choice of soups, appetizers and 21 main courses plus dessert. New York Mayor Koch “blessed” the place with: “The food is pretty good here. You should come back.”

Enjoy the playing fountains or ice skaters at Rockefeller Center’s American Festival Cafe that celebrates U.S. food with succulent Maryland crab cakes, barbecued back ribs, Sonoma lamb steak, little neck clams and Key lime pie. Serves all three meals, always crowded.

The spectacle is almost as gala at DDL Foodshow in lower level of Trump Tower (724 Fifth Ave.), a building about as understated as a World’s Fair midway. Excellent Italian food, rust-marble walls soaring around the atrium, a 90-foot waterfall, but no truth to the rumor that an Aztec maiden is tossed over every noon.

I Gattopardo (45 West 56th) has convinced us on two trips that owner Mario Gattorna serves some of the best Italian food, particulalry Genovese , in town. Very elegant, always filled with visiting Italians, a heavenly specialty of rack of veal stuffed with Fontina cheese and imported mushrooms, the bocconcini just as good.

Delis are something special in New York; Ratner’s (138 Delancey St.) considered best for dairy, the Second Avenue Deli (at 156th) throwing the whole town into raves for its kosher fare. Unbelievably jammed with friendly folks offering you a bit of their pastrami, or trying to lift a pickle from your table’s jar. It deserves every accolade.

Going first-class: Old money from Palm Beach and Bar Harbor seem to divide their visits between the St. Regis (Fifth Avenue and 55th; $195-$250) and the Carlyle (35 East 76th; slightly higher). First is a pleasure dome built by John Jacob Astor in 1904, noted for its humorous Maxfield Parrish mural in the Old King Cole dining room, the latter equally elegant but with a solemnity bordering on the funereal. Permanent apartments for regulars here cause a booking problem.

Inter-Continental (111 East 48th; $165-$210) has blossomed from the 57-year-old Barclay into one of (if not the most) exquisite hotels in New York. Dripping with traditional furnishings and decor, superb rooms, a gorgeous lobby highlighted by a domed-bronze bird cage at center. Its La Recolte dining room has every food critic in town staggering into ecstasy, a prix fixe , six-course menu for $42 and worth every sou . All these hotels have wonderful weekend packages.

On your own: New York’s cultural and recreational diversions are so infinite that we can only refer you to the following paragraph to state your interests for a summer or winter visit.

For more information: Call the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau at (212) 397-8222, or write (2 Columbus Circle, New York 10019) for brochures on hotels, restaurants, map-guide, coming events and free attractions. Ask for the Big Apple Package.