Favorite Spots Below West 14th Street

Returning to the Village after months of travel is thrilling...

There’s a moment in our journey to Manhattan when, just after crossing the Harlem River onto Manhattan and the West Side Highway, the glorious George Washington Bridge comes into view, spanning the blue Hudson, and you know you are irrevocably, thrillingly, in the city.

The cliffs of the Palisades at this point are still verdant and undeveloped and for a moment you can try to imagine the thrill Henry Hudson’s crew must have felt in 1609 when they first encountered this part of the world. No one said it better than Scott Fitzgerald in the final sentences of The Great Gatsby:

For a transitory enchanted moment, man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

“Something commensurate with his capacity for wonder.” I’ve made this journey countless times, and the thrill of heading down the West Side Highway never diminishes.

And when you arrive to find not one but two parking spaces in front of your building, it feels as if the streets of the city are welcoming you back home.

It’s this happiness that compels me to note some of our favorite places in the West Village to eat, places we go to again and again, and never tire of.

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