Would it be realistic/plausible to find a little restaurant in the ground floor (or even the basement floor) of a townhouse-like building or a brownstone house on the UWS? preferably in a street that is mostly residential...
probably... they're common enough in other areas of manhattan... why don't you just google for 'NYC UWS restaurants'? if you don't find any, it's fiction, so invent one!
I have spent an entire afternoon googling this but didn't come up with an answer satisfying enough, or not precise or clear enough. I have also browsed google maps of the area and zoomed in the restaurants in places i could have imagined it could be, but found nothing more than 1 hit that I wasn't sure about. therefor i decided to ask someone who might know the area IRL. I know it's fiction, but wouldn't some one who knows the place react negatively if I invent something that would be highly unlikely to be there? or is this not even an issue? The problem is, I guess, that I'm not sure how much I can make up about a real place... and a place that so many people know really well. I mean it's not like inventing a restaurant in a small town that few people know about.
it's a non-issue... novelists are always making up places in real cities/towns/etc.... just place it at the end of a residential street that intersects with a semi-commercial street, so it won't seem to be a blatant zoning violation... and you don't have to give an address or even a street name, but can use real adjoining streets to give it authentic flavor...
Have you ever even been to NYC? If your setting it in NYC understand we have mixed zonings, for obvious reasons. How about park west café and deli on 108th and central park west? Nice little place had lunch their a few months ago, they have Turkish tea and coffee witch is nice.
So would you agree that it's a non-issue? I saw this picture on google of this little tiny mediterranean restaurant in the basement between two stairs of some kind of townhouse, but now I think that one is closed down. Are there more restaurants like this? I myself have never been there, but I hope it won't be too much of a problem, because NYC is the perfect setting for this story, maybe even the only possible city, that's why I'm trying to back up every detail like this.
Ive only been there a couple of times, but I saw lots of basement restaurants/bars/cares in these types of buildings, and some ground (1st?) floor too. I was mostly downtown, but I really can't see what you're planning being a problem.
Most people will not know its not a real restaurant. I personally live in the Bronx, I would not know myself unless I cheeked if you made up a restaurant in the Upper East Side. I would however be sorry to hear about that particular deli closing.
yes, as i said in my first post... and, for the record, i was born and raised in the suburbs of nyc, worked in manhattan in my teens, went to the city often for shopping, theater, etc., from the early 50s to the mid-90s, even lived across from lincoln center [the upper west side] for a while... so i've dined at the kind of restaurant you're describing, in various areas of the city... bottom line?... stop worrying and keep writing!
