I lived in New York for ten years (most of it in Washington Heights), and I can't agree with you enough.

Except for the home-cooked meal thing. My ex-girlfriend and I delivered an entire Thanksgiving feast to a friend's apartment when we discovered our stove had stopped working (and probably hadn't been working for months), but cooking food was a relative rarity. New York is the only place I have been where people throw birthday parties for each other in a local bar.