Arthur Emil, the man behind the late Windows on the World and The Rainbow Room, has won the coveted contract to operate the famous Oak Room and Oak Bar (pictured) in the Plaza Hotel, which is near the end of a three-year, $400 million makeover. The 18 story landmark building opened in 1907 and operated as a hotel until 2005, after being sold for $675 million. After delays blamed on “red tape”, the Plaza......

The Plaza, you know that place where the kids in Gossip Girl hang out, is turning 100 years old today. The date is marked by the first guest to ever check in to the famed establishment. Who was it? The fancy-named Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, and of course a PR-driven hotel manager was behind that. The NY Times reports that "His arrival was orchestrated by the Plaza’s first manager, who wanted the new hotel to open......

Recently Time Magazine picked the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present. Now as these lists seem to come out about once a month and mean about as much as the prize in a box of cracker jacks we've learned to generally completely ignore them. In fact, we probably wouldn't have even registered this latest list if it weren't for this genius post on The Morning News. Matthew Baldwin went through the......

The second book to be featured in the NY Times' Great Summer Read is Laura Esquivel's Like Water For Chocolate. A crowd-pleasing bestseller in 1992, Gothamist thinks that Like Water for Chocolate is perfect for the serialization treatment, given the book's rhythms, twists and turns. The only thing is that you'll be craving Mexican food after reading the book - each chapter is punctuated by a recipe - so here are Citysearch's best Mexican picks......

If you picked up a hard copy of the NY Times this morning, you would have noticed an insert: An excerpt of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It's all apart of the NY Times's Great Summer Read, which is serializing four books starting today. Times readers will get excerpts from the book each day until Sunday, and other books coming up include Breakfast at Tiffany's, Like Water For Chocolate, and The Color of......