New York Marathon

I don’t know what it is, but New York makes me hungry. Maybe it’s all that walking, past block after block of enticing food shops and bakeries and markets. In any case, eathing there is always a dilemma: Should I sneak in a meal at an old favorite or try one of the latest hot spots? Here are some of the places I managed to squeeze in on a recent trip.

On my first night out, I wanted to see what Anne Rosenzweig, one of the country’s most original and uncompromising chefs, was up to at The Lobster Club, her new Upper East Side bistro. Named after the sandwich she made famous at her landmark American restaurant, Arcadia, the new place is set in a narrow brownstone just around the corner from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her paper cone of rock shrimp, rolled in cornmeal, fried to an exemplary crisp and served with a gorgeous jalapeno tartar sauce, started things off with a flourish. The lobster club, a towering triple-decker sandwich of Maine lobster with smoky bacon, good tomato and greens on an eggy brioche lavished with lemony handmade mayonnaise, is a must--but only if you’ll still have room for her earthy braised short ribs with horseradish gnocchi. Or the extraordinary skewered duck hearts sandwiched with foie gras on a bed of lentils and apples. And her mussels in a basil-scented white wine broth laced with tiny bird’s tongue pasta and white beans. The wine list, by the way, is filled with hard-to-find bottles at prices that are, for New York, a bargain.

With its wall of river stones and dramatic wooden “trees,” Nobu Matsuhisa’s Tribeca restaurant Nobu, opened in partnership with Drew Nieporent, looks nothing like its frumpy Beverly Hills predecessor, Matsuhisa. The Peruvian-inflected Japanese menu resembles the West Coast original but is better-edited and cooked with considerably more finesse. At the bar for lunch, I asked for omakase (the chef’s choice) from the smiling sushi chef, who, it turns out, used to work at Matsuhisa. Of the series of small courses, I liked a thin pastry gathered into a pouch and fried with a bite of duck and creamy shiitake mushroom cap inside, a delicate flounder steamed in banana leaf with crinkly soft Chinese cabbage and shiitake, and the dessert of green tea ice cream wrapped in mochi, pounded glutinous rice. Vivid in flavor and presented with verve, this is Japanese pop food that cleverly caters to Americans’ penchant for foods sweet and hot.

Except for Rubicon in San Francisco, every other restaurant in affable restaurateur Nieporent’s small empire (Montrachet, Tribeca Grill and a brand-new trattoria called Zeppole) is just a stroll away from the rest. To create Layla, his hip Middle Eastern restaurant, Nieporent turned a century-old warehouse with ornate tinned ceiling and skyscraper views into a wild, kitschy fantasy of a casbah with Arabic mosaics, broken urns and a life-sized snake-charming mannequin coaxing a cobra out of a basket overhead. There’s also a belly dancer who swirls and shimmies, valiantly dodging the waiters as she dances between the tables. Layla’s menu reminds me of just how alluring the intricately spiced foods of the Mideast can be. When I asked for a sampling, the chef sent out puffy balloons of pita, flatbread covered with a carpet of herbs and a series of vibrant mezzeh, including sardines wrapped up in phyllo. As good as the appetizers were, the entrees were even better: Try the fabulous squab charred in grape leaves or beautiful lamb kabobs on couscous dotted with tiny currants.

A few nights later, I made a reservation at the 109-year-old Peter Luger Steak House with high expectations. Not long ago, I was at Sostanza in Florence and overheard a New Yorker grumbling that his bistecca alla fiorentina didn’t “hold a candle to Peter Luger.” On the Brooklyn side of the Williamsburg Bridge, Peter Luger Steak House looks like a German beer hall with its half-timbered walls, scrubbed wooden tables and shelf of beer steins. The waiters are gruff and efficient; the diners, a mix of tattooed youths in gold chains, chic women in furs, young couples on a splurge and Japanese tourists. You can hear the sizzle as the waiters race out with platters of steak charred in a hot broiler. There’s only one cut here--Porterhouse, aged in-house for a few weeks until it is silken in texture and suffused with a faintly sweet, full-bodied flavor. Too bad the bread was spongy and all the sides except the baked potato were pretty much inedible.

Lunch at Lespinasse in the St. Regis Hotel was my choice for whiling away an afternoon. With its widely spaced tables, crackerjack service and

luxury appointments, the grand dining room is an oasis of calm. But nothing quite prepares you for chef Gray Kunz’s boldly conceived, unabashedly sensual food. He started out strong and kept going: exquisite sauteed foie gras with a peppered pineapple confit--and sweet peas; turbotine with threads of fried ginger in a milky broth perfumed with lemongrass and purple basil; a stack of braised short ribs presented in an iron skillet, so delectably soft that you could eat them with a spoon. This was more like alchemy than cooking. A young chef who worked for five years in Hong Kong, Kunz, I’m told, has someone in his kitchen whom he calls his spice master. It showed: Lamb chops with a tagine of prunes and couscous shot through with warm spices were spectacular.

After such a lunch, dinner would be late--and light. Nearby Honmura An is an airy upstairs space with soaring ceilings, brick walls and a glassed-in workshop where a master soba chef rolls out and cuts his noodles by hand. Sake, served in a cedar box that overflows onto a ceramic tray, is excellent, and I love the feel and taste of the wood against my lips. We started with silvery little fish from Japan with a dab of snow crab, cucumber and ginger salad, followed by an elegantly simple plate of sashimi: sweet shrimp, yellowtail and gorgeous pale uni. The exquisite quality of the soba, which are made from stone-ground buckwheat, is best appreciated in the austere seiro, plain buckwheat noodles served chilled on a bamboo mat, with a soy-based dipping sauce and grated radish. The fat, slippery udon were delicious, too, in a bowl of dashi with wild greens.

JoJo is as much a quintessential French bistro as L’Ami Louis was in the old days in Paris. Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s tastes are true; his food, unfussy and deeply satisfying. You can dine downstairs in the brownstone’s narrow room lined with red banquettes or upstairs in one of two diminutive rooms. Every dish at lunch was intensely appealing, from a silky terrine de foie gras served with a thicket of haricots verts and threads of lemon peel to a bundle of asparagus smothered in morels and served in a sauce made with vin jaune (a sweet “yellow” wine from the Jura Mountains of eastern France). Salmon slow-cooked at 200 degrees had a delicate intensity and shimmering texture, and duck came as a little won ton stuffed with a confit of the dark meat, while the breast was served rare, thinly sliced with mustard sauce. And Vongerichten’s Valrhona cake, dark as mud and gooey in the center, is the ultimate chocolate dessert.

Compared to the tight confines of most New York restaurants, the high, vaulting space of Gramercy Tavern is impressive, even before you take in the dining rooms decorated with American folk art and ravishing country bouquets. The restaurant eschews an a la carte menu for a three-course menu (at $56) with lots of choices. Chef Tom Colicchio also offers more ambitious menus ranging from $72, for a spring tasting menu, to $100, for the five-course morel menu I tried. “Lasagna” of yellow egg pasta embedded with herbs and layered with asparagus and morels was followed by seared tuna with pickled ramps, more aparagus and more morels. By the third course, I’d had my fill of morels and began sneaking bites of my companion’s $90 market menu, which included a huge scallop in pale green lovage milk, shad roe with eggplant “caviar” and a superb taste of foie gras with rhubarb chutney and candied baby leeks. In keeping with the American theme, Gramercy Tavern offers an outstanding farmstead cheese plate. The wine list is interesting, too, and, in many cases, well-priced. Still, my meal was overkill: Next time I’m not pulling out all the stops.

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NEW YORK NOSHES

Getting reservations--anywhere--is tough on short notice, so lunch is always a better bet than dinner. Plus some of the swankest restaurants have bargain priced prix fixe meals in the afternoon.

* Gramercy Tavern, 42 E. 20th St.; (213) 477-0777. Expensive.

* JoJo, 160 E. 64th St.; (212) 223-5656. Moderate

* Layla, 211 W. Broadway; (212) 431-0700. Moderate.

* Lespinasse, St. Regis Hotel; 2 E. 55th St.; (212) 339-6719. Expensive

* Lobster Club, 24 E. 80th St.; (212) 249-0500. Moderate.

* Peter Luger Steak House, 178 Broadway, Brooklyn; (718) 387-7400. Moderate.