I have always loved visiting the restaurants of Manhattan. I remember cabbing in from La Guardia on a long ago trip, and seeing a billboard promoting the vast number of restaurants in the city. It stated that there were over 12,000 restaurants from which to choose. Now that is a lot of restaurants. More impressive was the fact that the billboard was promoting the Upper East Side, and those 12,000 restaurants were contained just within that one section of the city. So many restaurants, so little time.

I used to spend a lot of time there looking for new concepts, or new concept ideas. It took me a few years to realize that what worked in New York wouldn’t necessarily work in the rest of the country. And vice versa. Manhattan has a lot of variables that make it more of a “hothouse” climate than the rest of the country. The population density takes a while to adjust to. The blend of nationalities living and working together result in ethnic concepts that you just don’t see elsewhere (like French Ethiopian). The crush of tourists from the U.S., and the rest of the world, makes it hard to get a read on sales potential in many concepts.

Transportation challenges abound. Over half of the residents of New York do not have a car. Subway access to restaurants becomes more of an issue than in the rest of the country. High rise units are small, often not even having full kitchen facilities. Even when they do, many residents prefer to get out of their tight quarters when eating. Sidewalk carts, Korean delis, diners, and other icons of the city round out the visible differences to those of us who do not live there.

This long introduction to the Manhattan restaurant market is to point out the economic difficulties that restaurateurs there, some famous and some not, are facing like the rest of us. Sales are getting tougher, costs are increasing. Frank Bruni, restaurant critic for The New York Times, wrote a column last week highlighting the many ways that restaurant operators are responding to these challenging times. Some of their responses are similar to what you see in the rest of the country; some seem to be peculiar to a market like New York.

Mr. Bruni highlights the changes he is seeing:

“You’ll notice more special deals, more value meals: happy-hour snacks for under $4; late-night nibbles for less; Sunday promotions; lunchtime bargains. You’ll see hanger steaks where strip steaks were once ascendant, dwarf lobsters where steroidal crustaceans once reigned. Luxury items will be scarcer, low-ticket options more ubiquitous.

You’ll notice more comfort food and more straightforward food, as many restaurateurs defer to what diners are guaranteed to order, rather than what chefs are flattered to concoct. And you’ll hear the accents and see the stamp of foreigners, who are claiming an ever greater percentage of restaurant seats, their currencies more valuable than ours.

The owner of Trestle on Tenth said that the average check per diner on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights has declined to $45 from about $55 a year ago. Diners are forgoing bottled water and monitoring the amount, and expense, of the wine they drink.

Other restaurants are trying harder than ever to cast themselves as inexpensive, to put anxious diners at ease. That’s partly what all those menus that divide appetizers into categories — cured meats here, composed dishes there, finger foods over there — are about. A profusion of items with modest digits attached to them lures diners into the menu, reassuring them that they can navigate it without going broke.

Bar menus around the city are growing longer as more diners move away from properly set tables and conventional meals with higher checks. And restaurants are being more aggressive about promotions that attract diners on days and at hours when the restaurants aren’t typically full.”

Manhattan seems to be faring a little better than the rest of the country on holding on to sales and traffic, however, the reason a lot of higher end restaurants are doing well is an influx of European visitors taking advantage of the strong Euro.  One restaurant quoted in the article commented that their percentage of European customers has increased from 15% in 2004 to over 40% today. That is a safety net that the rest of the restaurant industry doesn’t have. New York, New York…start spreading the news.