eating alone

Destination · Bar · Manhattan · $$$

walk-in

A martini built on junmai daiginjo sake carrying hinoki, and a katsu sandwich made with a fried slab of mortadella, on Hudson Street.

Destination · Bar · Manhattan · $$$

book ahead

Mezcal fat-washed with mole under an amari blend, and a salted plum and tamarind milk punch, at the corner of 1st and 1st. Twelfth bar in the world.

Solid · Restaurant · Manhattan · $

walk-in

Carnitas Ramirez scoops every cut of one pig out of bubbling fat behind a pea-green counter, chops it to order and puts it in a corn tortilla: shank, snout, tongue, skin, ribs, rump, ear and brain among them.

Solid · Restaurant · Manhattan · $$$

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Potato salad under a glitter of trout roe, piquillo peppers packed with cold crab, and an anchovy-draped burger, on a standing ledge off Broome Street.

Solid · Restaurant · Manhattan · $$$

booking essential

Douglas Kim's jogae muchim is clams and red snapper, and The Infatuation rates that plate above the hand-made noodles the room is named for.

Solid · Bar · Manhattan · $$$

book ahead

Dave Arnold runs the drinks in Contra's old room on Orchard Street, and the back bar is so tight he had to pick what survived: liquid nitrogen and carbonation.

Solid · Bar · Brooklyn · $$$

walk-in

Nine years as a Thursday-night party in a Red Hook bar, and now a tiki room one staircase above an 1892 landmark steakhouse.

Listed · Bar · Manhattan · $$

walk-in

One beer on draft, and it is Guinness. Oysters beside it, martinis at $15, and a backyard bigger than the bar.

Listed · Bar · Manhattan · $$$

book ahead

Ryan Chetiyawardana's first permanent New York bar, in an old club space under the Hotel Park Ave, pouring the Beeswax Old Fashioned he first made years ago and a whisky sour built with miso and koji.

Listed · Bar · Manhattan · $$

walk-in

A bitters tasting room that builds every cocktail out of the shelf behind it. The 8 Amaro Sazerac is the order.