When walking through the Upper West Side between 60th and 69th streets, it’s possible to forget that it’s just a few minutes away from bustling midtown. People walking dogs and parents with children traverse the area’s quieter streets, lending a stark contrast to the commercial vibes found 10 blocks below. Sandwiched between Central Park to the east and Riverside Park South at the Hudson River, and with Lincoln Center at its center, this section of the Upper West Side is a sort of refuge for families and residents seeking a serene space in the heart of Manhattan. The seven-acre Riverside Park South, which starts on West 59th street and stretches beyond 69th, includes a dog park, baseball field, basketball courts and open waterfront for joggers and cyclists. Central Park’s nearby amenities include the 15-acre Sheep Meadow, a bike path and several playgrounds. For dining, locals head to Broadway and Columbus Avenue, where many of the restaurants offer outdoor seating in warm months.

Favorites include Cafe Fiorello, an Italian restaurant that opened across the street from Lincoln Center more than 35 years ago, and Bar Boulud, a French bistro known for its charcuterie — both on Broadway.best wine bar wanchai At its core, the neighborhood boasts the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts complex, also known as Lincoln Square, from 65th to 66th streets between Columbus and Amsterdam avenues. new age wine denverIt is the cultural hub of not just the city but also the world.best wine bars in dfw Dance, music, opera and theater performances are held daily all throughout the year at Lincoln Center. wine by the case london

This summer’s Lincoln Center Festival will run from July 13-31 and will include performances of Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” the new Chinese opera “Paradise Interrupted,” and more.buy bulk wine uk “It is still pretty diverse by income and profession and it’s seen by some as a place where young families want to come and live,” said Elizabeth Caputo, chair of Community Board 7 and a longtime resident, of the West 60th streets. what is the best red wine to drink daily“You have a fair number of students here, people going to Fordham [University] and Juilliard [School], you have a lot of young professionals and then you have a lot of people who have moved here just before they’re retiring and want access to the cultural institutions.” Starting in the late 1990s, the neighborhood experienced major development along its waterfront.

Trump Place luxury apartments and Riverside Park South were both built on what was formerly a train yard. “I’ve come to think of the Upper West Side as the most suburban part of Manhattan,” said Tiga McLoyd, a real estate agent for Citi Habitats who works in the area and has been a resident since 2002. “We see a lot of families because the Upper West has the best park access than any part of the city. But we also get a lot of young working people because our train access is really good.” But a few blocks away from the glitz of the riverside development is Amsterdam Houses, a public housing project built in 1947 that consists of 13 buildings and more than 2,000 residents. The red brick facade of the buildings makes for a stark juxtaposition to the sleek luxury properties surrounding them. For those who aren’t in the affordable housing, homes in the West 60th streets can fetch steep prices, which are on the rise, data show. The median sales price in the neighborhood was $1,390,000 in 2015, up 46% from $950,000 in 2014, according to StreetEasy.

The median sales price for Manhattan as a whole in 2015 was $977,500. In 2015 the median recorded sales price for a condo in the West 60s was $2,254,332, about 50% more than the overall borough median of $1,501,919, the listings site found. The median sales price for co-op in the neighborhood, however, was $750,000, 5% greater than the overall borough median of $712,733. The median rent in the West 60s was $3,895 in 2015, compared to $3,200 for the borough. But despite the perks living in the area comes with, some younger locals say it can be a bit dull at night. “It does get a little dry living in a family neighborhood. You don’t see much action past 10 p.m. The streets are pretty empty and there aren’t many people walking around,” said Katie McNamara, a 30-year-old district sales manager who has lived in the West 60s for two years. “I sometimes feel like the only single person here.” But others love the family vibes. “My husband and I moved here because we got lonely in the suburbs.

Here everyone is really close and we have friends and family that are close,” said one-year resident Bonnie Horowitz, 67, who co-owns a software company with her husband based in Bayville, Long Island. “I like that it’s got a pretty good cross section of people. We have people from everywhere here and somehow we all get along.” The West 60s sit between Central Park and the Hudson River, and run from West 60th to West 69th streets.When it comes to dining on the Upper West Side, one must acknowledge that it’s an older neighborhood, whose charm is in the sustain, not the attack. And so it is with its best restaurants, which rely on a sense of history and place rather than innovation. 1. Shun Lee West43 W. 65th St., nr. It’s been 35 years since Michael Tong opened this Lincoln Center offshoot of his upscale Upper East Side Chinese restaurant, Shun Lee Palace. The sense of time is both seductive and deceiving. There can be little doubt that the restaurant — with its bow-tie-and-vested waitstaff, glowing dragons, and elaborately folded napkins — speaks to another era, when knowledge of Chinese regional cuisine was limited by the fact that most Americans weren’t aware China had regions.

At the same time, even in 1981, Tong was channeling the much more ancient flavors of Yangzhou, Sichuan, and Shanghainese cuisine and those delicate balances found in the push-pull of hot-and-sour soup, for instance, or the mellow sweetness of red-cooked short ribs, Hanghzhou style. 2. Cafe Luxembourg200 W. 70th St., nr. Ever since Tom Valenti’s Ouest shuttered last year, seriously good French food has been hard to come by around these parts. Haute cuisine it isn’t, but Lynn Wagenknecht’s excellent bistro belongs to the proud lineage of Upper West Side French spots like La Caravelle and La Poullailer (and Le Quercy and too many too long gone to name). The 90-seat restaurant is everything a neighborhood bistro should be. The menu reads like a Sondheim revue of bistro classics, but the greatest hits here are truly great: a perfectly executed steak-frites with an exoskeleton of char, a silky au poivre sauce, and salty fries; and a crock of French onion soup that, like the aproned waiters, has a warm heart under a crusty exterior.

3. Awadh2588 Broadway, nr. Lucknow, the capital of Awadh, the state in Uttar Pradesh from whence Gauruv Anand draws culinary inspiration, is like the Upper West Side of India: ancient, elegant, and refined. In the 18th century, Lucknow was the seat of the Nawabs, an aristocratic bunch whose love of luxury was so great they lost all of their teeth, which — good news for us — resulted in the development of the galouti kebab, a patty of leg of lamb, minced six times and then tenderized with papaya and mixed with masala. Awadh, the bi-level restaurant on Broadway, is the only place to get true galouti kebabs in the city. Among the other revelations at Awadh is dum pukht, a genre of cooking wherein the protein is sealed under a layer na’an, immersed in clarified butter, and cooked slowly. What goes on under there is alchemy, as dishes like Sufiana murgh biryaani, a mixture of creamy chicken and aromatic basmati rice, handily prove. 4. Boulud Sud20 W. 64th St., nr. The Lyonnaise chef Daniel Boulud is a shape-shifter: stuffy on the Upper East, cool on the Bowery, transactional in midtown, and here, in the Upper West Side, pure comfort.

The space at Boulud Sud — gently curved ceiling, colorful banquettes in Harlequin stripes, white tablecloths — radiates monied calm. The menu, which spans Arabic flatbread to Ibérico ham, is like a Carnival Cruise calling on all Mediterranean ports. Executive chef Travis Swikard is as at ease with the muscular flavors of octopus a la plancha as he is balancing the subtle flavors of a spring-pea risotto with Maine lobster and lemon verbena. 5. Absolute Bagels2788 Broadway, nr. And then there’s Absolute Bagels, the only bagel store worth the line. Let the fancies have Black Seed or Sadelle’s. Absolute Bagels is a filthy little store with sublime bagels. Owned by Sam Thongkrieng, who emigrated from Bangkok in the 1980s, Absolute channels the recipes of yesteryear (Thongkrieng learned his craft at Ess-a-Bagel) to form bagels of both ineffable softness and satisfying crunch. Their outsides are substantial but ultimately yielding. Their interiors are soft and voluptuous. As for the coffee — the Abbot to a bagel place’s Costello — it is widely understood as a waste of time.