Time Square, the Empire State Building, Grand Central….

This is Midtown Manhattan

Tourist flock to it, while locals often try - and fail - to avoid it

But there is more to this part of town than tourist traps and traffic congestion

Midtown has been electrified by a bolt of Brooklyn Hip and Wall Street money.

Maybe it's time you took a second look

Midtown is everything between 14th street and Central Park South

It is the world’s largest central business district

It also has some of the most expensive real estate

And it doesn’t get any ritzier than Fifth Avenue which commands the world's highest

retail rents

But if there is one building more responsible than any other for midtown’s success

it's this one

Built in 1913, Grand Central Terminal helped sparked a boom in construction that made Midtown

the center of American capitalism

This audacious building is used by more than one million people a week.

A century after it was built it has only now reached capacity. That’s future proofing

New York embraces eating out. There are over 45 thousand restaurants in the city

It would take 125 years to eat in every one - not saying your should

Here in Midtown - the restaurant scene is embracing change

A number of Brooklyn institutions have jumped the river

Roberta’s pizza started on the other side of the East River in 2008 but their second

outpost is based in Urbanspace food hall - smack dab in Midtown

You could be fooled into thinking this is Williamsburg not Park Avenue

Another Brooklyn import is Ichiran, the Japanese ramen chain whose first US restaurant opened

in Bushwick in 2016 .

Here you can sit with a group or…. in splendid isolation in one of the so called ‘flavour

concentration booths’. Very serious

But if you want to swap Brooklyn cool for something a bit more luxury

we've got the spot

The Office is an intimate speakeasy offering pre-Prohibition style cocktails and a food

menu to match

You’ll find it hidden away on the 35th floor of the super swanky Mandarin Oriental

This is one of the most expensive hotels in New York, rooms start at $1000 a night

But there are 113 other hotels in Midtown offering plenty of choices

So forget the old wisdom that the excitement is basically, anywhere but Midtown

. This part of Manhattan has something new and

exciting to offer, whether it’s high end or rough-and-ready.