Fact Sheets & Video - New York City

Magnolia is a tiny bakery on the western end of Bleeker Street in Greenwich Village whose specialty is frosted cupcakes. It is so popular that at midnight, there's a line snaking out the door and tourists who visit pose for pictures, proudly holding cupcakes frosted in pale green and lavender for the cameras.

Magnolia Bakery is where Carrie and Miranda devoured cupcakes in Sex and the City. Some New York fans cite the high frosting to cake ratio as the source of the appeal!

Rice to Riches is a funky new restaurant on Spring Street (between Mott and Mulberry) serving only rice pudding. It comes in 21 regular flavours including understanding vanilla, forbidden maple, pumpkin pie, cinnamon sling, chocolate mint reunion, coffee collapse, man made mascarpone, pistachio protest, coconut coma and raspberry statement- just to name a few. There is also one international special, sugar-free special and daily special.

Visit Dylan's Candy Bar on Third Avenue at 60th Street. Dylan Lauren (daughter of Ralph Lauren) opened this candy bar in NY in 2002. Kids can do candy mosaics and candy jewellery design and there are candy chic beauty treats like moisturiser disguised as a chocolate bar.

This is arguably the most unique & unrivalled candy & sweets store in the world! Here there are over 4,000 different candies including 16 flavours of Skittles and 21 different colours of M&Ms, 12 different Hershey Kisses, a Pez zone, and an old-fashioned soda fountain with custom-made ice-cream flavours, from Central Park Zoo to Candy Bar Blast. And if you're determined to take a bath in chocolate, head to the Candy Spa, where you'll find Hot Chocolate Bath Salts and Cheeky Chocolate-Milk Bubble Bath.

For the ultimate in hamburgers visit DB Bistro Moderne. This deluxe US$100 hamburger is made from Japanese Kobe beef. Kobe cows are massaged daily, causing the fat to mingle with the meat, and resulting in a burger of unsurpassed tenderness.

The DB Burger Royale is heart stopping, in both the literal and figurative sense of the word: a fresh-baked, toasted parmesan-and-poppy-seed bun encasing three inches of beef and short ribs braised in red wine, with a nugget of foie gras embedded within. Either side, along with the tomato confit, chicory and fresh horseradish, is a sliver of black Perigord truffle - which, at $350 per pound, accounts for much of the price.

From Reuters to Time magazine the word is "RAW" and the focus in the restaurant capital of the world, New York is on Quintessence Restaurant.

With three thriving locations in Manhattan and more to come, Quintessence serves up raw food. What began as a diet for people who wanted a regimen stricter than veganism the Raw Food Movement has won headlines as a celebrity beauty secret. A hundred percent raw, as provided by nature, these foods are packed with minerals, vitamins, essential oils, and most importantly, the fountain of youth, enzymes!