Midtown New York Goes Glam

The dazzling American Folk Art Museum.

PHOTO: Courtesy of The Folk Art Museum

Of all the neighboorhoods in Manhattan, Midtown is not one I would have expected to be high on glamour girls' lists this fall. But thanks to architect David Childs's AOL Time Warner Center, a 2.8-million-square-foot glass complex that should be finished early next year, the whole area from the high Forties to the low Sixties has extra star appeal. Gone is the musty old Coliseum, and in its place at Columbus Circle are mirrored towers soon to be filled with luxury condominiums like the one that set a record for a New York residence, at more than $40 million. There will also be a grand shopping gallery and hotly anticipated restaurants, including one from the French Laundry's Thomas Keller and a steak house from Jean-Georges Vongerichten. Just as exciting: tucked between the center's two towers will be the new home of Jazz at Lincoln Center, designed by Rafael Viñoly, complete with an auditorium that overlooks Central Park. To top it off, a Mandarin Oriental hotel is sweeping up some stellar views with its thirty-fifth- to fifty-fourth-floor rooms and suites. The only downside? With Mayor Bloomberg's antismoking laws, a guest craving a cigarette at the thirty-fifth-floor bar will have to ride the elevators like Eloise at the Plaza.

The last time anything in Midtown generated this much buzz was when Alain Ducasse brought his deliciously extravagant restaurant to the Essex House in 2000. Initially, I remember, critics seemed obsessed with the cost of the prix fixe menu ($160), but the ambrosial food eventually won four stars from The New York Times . This fall, the maestro, who even speaks a little English now, is opening Mix, a bistro at 68 West Fifty-eighth Street that will feature a lower-key mélange of North American and European cuisine (clam chowder meets bouillabaisse).

If Ducasse gets it right, Mix will join the shortlist of Midtown's smart restaurants. Celebrities and media types love Michael's for breakfast and lunch (never dinner). Not long ago, Paul Newman, Elvis Costello and Renée Zellweger were all in the garden room at the same time—at separate tables. The other place that draws a great power-lunch crowd is the Grill Room at the Four Seasons , where the rare woman may be spotted amid the gray suits of men like Michael Eisner, David Rockefeller and Rupert Murdoch. For dinner, the skinny fashion crowd has gotten hooked on the short-rib-and-foie-gras burger at Daniel Boulud's DB Bistro Moderne (on West Forty-fourth) and the creamy risotto at Town in the Chambers Hotel (on West Fifty-sixth).

After lunch, I'll gladly pass on dessert and indulge instead in a pair of lizard pumps or satin mules at Manolo Blahnik, the tiny boutique on West Fifty-fourth Street. (Dyeing, waterproofing and tips are available at Shoe Service Plus, on West Fifty-fifth.) The new stilettos in town can be found on Madison Avenue at the just-opened Jimmy Choo boutique—designed like a 1940s boudoir, with quilted-velvet sofas and satin-covered chairs—which also showcases an original bright and brassy handbag collection. The other bags people are talking about this season are from Asprey, which has redesigned its entire luxury-goods line, as well as its flagship store on Fifth Avenue.

But this neck of the woods doesn't offer only shopping and eating; it's a prime place for pampering, too. Bergdorf Goodman's first floor (heaven for jewelry and accessories) has been restored to reflect its original town-house architecture, and its New Level of Beauty, in the basement, offers a soothing buttermilk-and-brown-sugar pedicure at the BuffSpa (walk-ins welcome). Friends swear by Eliza Petrescu, known for shaping the city's best eyebrows, at the Avon Salon & Spa in the Trump Tower; and I hear that the spa's latest Diamond Experience antiaging facial is worth the couple of weeks you have to wait for an appointment.

Though there has been a major gap in the cultural life of Midtown since the Museum of Modern Art moved to Queens during reconstruction of its home on Fifty-third Street, there's a must-see next door: the American Folk Art Museum, designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien and named best new building in New York by the Municipal Arts Society last year. While you're there, you can watch Yoshio Tanigu-chi's plan for the new MoMA rising up around it. The Modern doesn't reopen until 2005, but not to worry: across the street is the eclectic Museum of Arts & Design and the MoMA Design Store, a bright boutique filled with art books and objects from names like Aalto, Eames, Noguchi and Starck—a reminder that the best designs don't require a makeover.