Smoked by AI · New York City
Guides.
Arguments about New York City, built off the same sourced entries as the list. Each one names rooms and says why they are in it. The venue pages have the prices and the sources behind them.
- The New York bagel argument
For visitorsFor localsFirst time here10 rooms
New York is arguing about whether a bagel should be the big faintly sweet quarter-plate thing it has sold since the sixties or the small tangy one that eats closer to a sourdough roll. Start on the new-wave side at Apollo and Popup, cross to the old-guard counters they are reacting against, then take the old guard's best case, which is two counters nobody argues about. Finish on the Lower East Side, where the bagel is what carries the fish and nobody is having the argument at all.
- The New York cocktail line
For visitorsFor localsLate night19 rooms
Sip & Guzzle, Bar Snack and Schmuck are beating New York's great cocktail bars, and that only reads as a story if you drink them in order. So this runs oldest first. Sasha Petraske's no-list format on Eldridge Street, then Death & Co's book-length list and Audrey Saunders' school at Pegu Club, then the technique that came out of a phone booth and onto Dave Arnold's open counter, then the Japanese line that runs deepest here, then the rooms that took North America's 2026 list, and finally the bars that were pouring long before any of it. Hotel lobbies and restaurant wine lists are somebody else's guide.
- Cured meat and broiled beef in New York
For visitorsFor localsFor groups12 rooms
Start at the one pastrami counter nobody disputes, then let four other delis argue with it about fat, the kosher rule and smoke. Cross into an appetizing store, where the fish is the order and the bagel is only scaffolding. Then go uptown to the steak, which opens on a porterhouse two critics cannot agree about, and finish with the mutton chop and the tabletop grill that answer the steakhouse question two different ways.
- The greenmarket in fall
For visitorsFor locals11 rooms
On now: Greenmarket fall 2026, 1 September to 30 November 2026.
Fall is when the New York greenmarket is worth building a day around, and this runs in the order the food travels. It starts at the Union Square stalls the chefs name out loud and crosses to Grand Army Plaza on a Saturday for the cider and the cheese that come down from Ulster County and Connecticut. Then it sits at the city kitchens that shop those stalls in the morning, goes up the Hudson to Dan Barber's fields, and finishes on Nick Tamburo's apple cider doughnut. Central Park is not in it.
- New York pizza, by style and by borough
For visitorsFor localsFirst time here13 rooms
Willa Moore is talking about two in the morning on Carmine Street, Will Hartman is talking about fermentation in Williamsburg, and neither of them is answering the same question. Start with a slice eaten standing up, then the square, which is a different lineage with a scandal attached. Then get on a train for the whole pies, meet the coal ovens that trade on nostalgia, and finish at Denino's on Staten Island and New Park in Howard Beach.