Hell's Kitchen is where the Theatre District keeps its kitchen, its crews and its appetite — the blocks just west of the lights, still scruffy enough to feel like a neighbourhood and fed by more countries than you can count on one avenue. This walk takes the food first, the river last.
Start down Ninth Avenue from 50th, the restaurant run: Thai next to Ethiopian next to Mexican next to Greek, doorway after doorway. Clock the ones you'd come back for, then cut west into the tenement side streets — fire escapes, holdout low-rises, the occasional stage door where Broadway hauls its sets in. This is the working half of the glamour.
Then out to the Hudson, where the USS Intrepid sits at Pier 86 with a submarine and a space shuttle aboard; the hull alone is worth the walk and free to stand under. Pick up the river greenway, the old piers now lawns, the breeze coming off the water with the new towers stacked behind you. End by turning east on 42nd, past the Circle Line, into Port Authority and the A/C/E — the least romantic building in Hell's Kitchen, and the one that gets you home.
