You really need an "ethnic" palate to enjoy good inexpensive food here, but then you can find great places where you can go every week and not get tired for under $40 for 2. Want the cheapest and best chinese food in NYC? Get out of chinatown, take the 7 to the end to Flushing, pretty much dozens of places to get full for around $10 a head. Woorijip (sp) in Koreatown is a great take-out deli that is probably the city's best bargain. And still the best thai food I've had remains Zabb out in Queens (they just opened an east village branch). I'm tending towards asian cuisine because I can say what's good with confidence, unlike the people who tell you to go to Empire Szechuan for the "excellent sesame chicken". Yes, it's gross to watch people eat an entire order by themselves, it's about 2k calories btw. And to round out the pacific rim, Sobaya is probably my all-time favorite. The biggest disappointments for me have always come at the high-priced "iconic" restaurants in the city -- I'm still wondering what the hell was on my plate when I went to Le Cirque, some rubbery crepe-omelet refugee from an airline menu that tasted like it had just spent 8 minutes in the microwave on high. Wonderful desserts though. As for western fare I just like the obvious because I don't know any better -- Lupa for pasta, Pearl for lobster rolls, John's for pizza. If anyone can recommend better and less crowded places for western-type cuisine, please don't be shy. Best burger place, anyone (so far Shake Shack for me)?
Not sure how important speed and performance is to you...... but the delay of market data and sending your order from other locations can be off by several seconds if you leave the NYC area. I have a trader in Miami and 3 in Tampa Bay, they routinely receive slower quotes and orders are slower entering the system. For automated trading (most of my biz), this is HUGE. You can certainly get an awesome internet connection (t-1, ds3) but prepared to pay a good amount for it. As in a few grand a month depening on the reliability. Now, I absolutely love Florida and Arizona.... but I find that even on vacation I can't hand trade because of the delays. And that type of stuff has NOTHING to do with the software.... once the order leaves your PC, it simply takes longer to get to NYSE or Nasdaq, etc....
I trade from Florida, and delay is certainly no more than a second. Cant really see a difference between being on 110 Wall and down here.