Long before the clever restaurants and dress shops, the streets and tenements were home to poor people.
Of course, some clever restaurants and cafés have cottoned onto the idea that not every person arriving for some nosh is taking part in a business breakfast, or dinner a deux, and have civilised the notion of eating alone.
This clever new restaurant on the Upper West Side, a neighborhood barren of ambitious cuisine until very recently, is many steps removed from the daily produce market under the sycamores of Place Richelme in Aix-en-Provence.
One night, as if primed for a clever Tweet, the restaurant screened "There Will Be Blood".
Proud Packets Among the more clever promotions celebrating restaurant milestones is that for Sono's first, or paper, anniversary.
A "clever and sharp" restaurant guide company with "telling" rankings and "a penchant for quote marks" from its thousands of "in-the-know" reviewers is "on the block".
Boston Chicken, the once high-flying fast-food chain, had a clever way to keep restaurant losses off its income statement.
But those restaurants present clever, dashing stage sets that find some poetry in the commotion.
As a marketing strategy, it was clever, earning the 476-restaurant franchise business more publicity than its popular macaroni and cheese ever could.
There are corner florists with clients rich enough to encourage remarkable displays of rare ripe seasonal blooms, and there is a clock repair, a by-appointment barbershop, two bookshops, and little restaurants with clever names and luminous dining rooms where the well-heeled neighborhood convenes attractively at night.
