Despite being a frequent visitor to New York, I made my first trip across the Brooklyn Bridge only a fortnight ago with many others from Manhattan as we headed for a Paul Simon concert at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Excellent, crisp pizza at Franny’s after the show, no more than a mile away, made me keen to return to this New York borough, which, if its population was singled out, would be the fourth largest city in America.

Two evenings later I was back in Brooklyn with Robert W Walsh, commissioner for small businesses in Mayor Bloomberg’s administration, at the beginning of a tour of some of the cafés, bars and restaurants that have sprung up there.