Daniel Boulud remembers an early visit to New York City, when a young David Bouley - "it was David before he was a chef" - cooked him lunch at Bouley's midtown apartment. But it was after seeing the team of young chefs at La Cote Basque that Boulud knew he wanted to come to New York: "The amount of production they could make, the amount of covers, the quality, and the energy in the kitchen, I was blast by that. I always felt then if there was a city where I would like to go and give it a shot, it would be New York." Raised on a farm outside of Lyon, Boulud trained under renowned French chefs such as Roger Vergé, Georges Blanc and Michel Guérard.

Born in Montecatini Terme, Italy, Sirio Maccioni recalls his arrival in New York City in 1958 and his subsequent rise through the restaurant ranks - at classic New York restaurants like Delmonico's and The Colony - to open Le Cirque in 1974. "Now it's almost good to be Italian," he says, "but back then they would talk about how Italians arrived with shopping bags." Nearly 30 years since the opening of Le Cirque, Maccioni's sons are working to expand the family dynasty to Las Vegas and Mexico City, while maintaining their father's role as the guardian of old-school style dining.

John McCormick moved to New York City from his hometown of Minneapolis. With little restaurant experience, he sets out to transform a former check-cashing shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn into a retro speakeasy with his best friend Billy Phelps.

McNally recounts how Vogue editor Anna Wintour's attempts to lure him to Paris to manage a clothing boutique misfired and inspired him instead to open the Odeon in Tribeca in 1980. After more than 20 years in the business, McNally thinks back wistfully to the early days of opening on a shoestring budget: "In some ways when you don't have much money it's much more interesting, it's much more fun, and you don't throw money at problems. You have to solve them creatively...maybe part of you thinks you struggle, but I think there's something romantic and wonderful and you always end up building something original."

Dubbed "the restaurant prince of New York," Meyer remembers picking olive pits up off the floor and checking coats at his first restaurant, Union Square Café. Today, Meyer is the first-ever restaurateur with 2 restaurants in Zagat's "Top 10," and Union Square Café has been the most popular restaurant in New York City for 6 years running (Zagat Survey).

"If your only use in life is that you're the hot restaurant of the moment and if they know you, and if they call you, they can get in - that's of course not how I want to be defined," says Drew Nieporent. A self-described "child of the sixties," Nieporent reflects on the conflict of his generation: "You want to do something that has integrity, that's culturally significant, but you also want to make a buck." Nieporent helped transform downtown New York into a dining destination when he opened Montrachet in Tribeca in 1985. Almost twenty years later, he owns 16 restaurants and his partners include Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams.

Minneapolis native Billy Phelps takes his earnings as a successful commercial photographer to build a cafe beneath the elevated tracks of the JMZ subway line in Brooklyn with longtime friend John McCormick. But his cocktail-napkin dreams sour as the money runs dry and friendships start to crumble.

What is it that makes New York City the restaurant capital of the world? Former New York Times restaurant critic Ruth Reichl considers this question, as she looks at the chefs and restaurateurs whose careers she has helped make and break. "Here more than any place you have a conjunction of business, tourism, people who have money but small apartments and small kitchens, very little time, people who've traveled a lot," she says. But "above all there is a well established restaurant culture here in a way that there hasn't been in any other American city."

"Fifteen years ago, my dream was to have one restaurant," admits Alsatian-born chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten. He earned four stars from The New York Times at age 29, and today he owns 11 restaurants worldwide. Former New York Times restaurant critic Ruth Reichl credited Jean Georges restaurant with creating "a subtle revolution in dining," and Vongerichten has been dubbed the "enfant terrible" of modern French cooking.

Tim Zagat offers words of caution to the would-be restaurateur, noting that the restaurant industry has the highest failure rate of any business in the United States. His and wife Nina's best-selling survey started as a hobby in 1979, and now covers 45 major markets worldwide.