This Season

Altamarea's Asian dining room under MoMA: all blades and glass and one very good bar.

A taverna the size of a block, where the fish is sold by the pound and the room by the hour.

Still the best room in the city for a 5:30 martini and a bad decision.

Garage doors open in summer, kale salad with a cult.

Silk-and-stone Japanese downstairs, with a bar that outsells the dining room every Friday.

Tiny, French, always louder than you remembered.

The Twenty Two's Levantine ground floor: all tile and low light, with a bar that fills first.

Andrew Carmellini's meat-and-Seaport room, with a great steak aging in a glass box.

The uptown outpost of Notting Hill's velvet-and-brass club, transplanted to 61st Street.

St. Marks slice shop with rotating square-pan styles; ranked on the national slice list for a reason.

Whole pies only, Mott Street, and a proper Neapolitan-ish crust done by people who care.

A downtown bistro with uptown manners, and the hardest table above 70th Street.

The white-jacketed SoHo room that still feels like a set built for one specific person.

Melissa Rodriguez in the old Del Posto room, now a live-fire steakhouse with a Tao Group crowd.

The 1837 room where the city invented the steakhouse and has failed to improve on it since.

A bistro-bar with a DJ booth and a wine list that means it.

Tavern-style, Midwest supper-club energy on Grove Street; the thin cracker crust is the point.

Small plates, low light, the most copied restaurant of its decade.

The room where nothing has ever gone wrong.

Coal oven since 1929, no slices, a clam pie worth the rule.

Mutton chops and fifty thousand clay pipes above your head.

Thin and delicate, old-school Italian cafe energy on Ninth Avenue; the pie that quietly outlasts the trends.

Four decades of seafood and still the cleanest dining room in Midtown.

Madison Avenue's café chair, occupied since 1986 by the same fifteen tables of regulars.

Daniel Boulud's steakhouse, where the prime rib trolley does the talking.

The only dining room in the park, on the Lake, and it knows it.

A dim sum-and-rum basement in Tribeca still running on 1930s Macau and a lot of candles.

A SoHo dining room that dresses like a brothel and serves like a bistro until two.

The Lowell's garden room: French technique, Moroccan spice, and the quietest money on the East Side.

La Mercerie's team inside Sotheby's Breuer building: French continental, priced like an auction.

The Flatiron's Russian living room, complete with samovars and a grandmother's worth of wallpaper.

A steakhouse for people who treat the room as a negotiation.

A Greek fish market with a marble room attached, and the best lunch deal in Midtown.

Red leather, low light, and the Black Label burger.

Fifty years of hand-pulled noodles and an equal amount of hand-pulled attitude.

The brasserie that lit the neighborhood; the bar is the room.

The Meatpacking fantasy of Paris, restarted and packed as if it never closed.

Coal-fired, same crust since 1933, and the Flatiron room still serves a proper sit-down slice.

Emilia-Romagna pasta in a room that hums.

A furniture showroom that quietly runs one of the most expensive dining rooms in the district.

The vodka pie with the tie-dye crust; the wait is the price.

Milled flour, thin and blistered, no attitude.

Midcentury power dining, cart service, an absurd wine list.

The most wanted table downtown: Italian-American cooking with a precision the room pretends not to need.

Corner banquettes, candlelight, and the best plate of vegetables in the city.

Tokyo discipline in a Midtown office tower: the robata counter is where the evening actually happens, the dining room is where the deals do, and both are full by six.

The Crown Building's basement jazz room: dark, small, and priced like an heirloom.

No menu. Tell them what you like and be quiet.

Crystal chandeliers, a red-glass bar, and the most expensive quiet in Midtown.

Hudson views and a room quiet enough to talk.

Standing room, spritz and tramezzini, best corner in the Village.

Upstairs at the Fasano: live bossa and jazz two nights a week, strictly for two.

A speakeasy behind a Chelsea coffee shop, with a copper tub in the middle of the floor.

Murals, piano, thirty-dollar martinis. Worth it once a year.

Two sets, phones away, a room that shushes you.

Old-world supper club; book the early show.

Cigar smoke, leather and a fireplace: the last Midtown club that isn't selling anything else.

The Surrey's Milanese living room, where the room is quieter than the clientele.

Time-travel rooms. Book it or don't go.

The room that taught New York how to drink.

Columbus Circle, fifth floor, big band and park windows.

A fortune teller out front, the best gimlet in the city inside.

West Chelsea's Miami import, all red velvet and ritual, with El Secreto behind an unmarked door.

A 1929 lightship tied to Pier 66, serving beer and a view of New Jersey it doesn't apologize for.

Gilt, mirrors and a piano: the Villard Mansion doing exactly what it was built for.

Two rooms, no bottles, and the only place on 23rd Street where the laughs aren't rented.

Lafayette Street's restaurant-nightclub hybrid, where the DJ is next to the dining room and everyone is aware.

An Upper East Side cocktail bar with a listening room the size of a closet.

The Beekman's basement, where downtown drinks like it's 1932 and means it.

Old-world Paris built into a Midtown side street: piano until midnight, DJ after.

Bowery basement for weird, good bills.

The W Times Square lobby bar, relit and renamed, still the easiest drink in the theater district.

Thirty-fifth floor of the Mandarin, facing the park, with the calmest bartenders in the city.

The Mark's black-leather bar, still the best-dressed room north of 60th.

Lexington and 73rd, red-lit, singers till four, and no phones allowed.

A listening room. Whisper or get glared at.

Reliable sunset, hotel crowd; the terrace is the reason.

A listening bar under the street: vinyl, low light, and a room that asks you to be quiet.

A NoMad cocktail room that treats design as a course and the martini as a thesis.

Sixty-five floors up; best cocktail view in Manhattan.

Soho Moroccan-motif nightclub from Paul Sevigny and Brian McPeck, known for drawing New York glitterati.

The Waldorf's restored promenade, back at a scale that makes one drink feel like an event.

An evening club and art salon in a Greenwich Village townhouse: half wine bar, half living room.

Bar downstairs, small stage upstairs. The closest thing left to a 2006 Lower East Side night.

Below the Public hotel; a long dark room that books real DJs on real sound.

Ring the bell, take the velvet settee, do not hurry.

Cash at the door, three sets a night, musicians playing for each other.

The Lafayette Street room that made a martini feel like a secret. Reopened, still dark, still worth the door.

Cabaret, theatre, and a room that rewards the people who do not flinch.

Cellar jazz-bar-club; live sets under low ceilings.

A whiskey library with a low stage and a sound system that respects the horns.

Pool, palms, LES skyline. Go early, leave before the line.

Velvet, mirrors, piano; the martini arrives on a silver tray.

Thirty-ninth floor of the Virgin, a Fitzgerald-themed terrace with the skyline doing the work.

Empire State straight on, cocktails better than they need to be.

The revolving bar over Times Square: the only room in the city that turns for you.

Latin jazz in a room the size of a hallway.