Our other guides move through a place. These move through a subject — one thing, done properly, wherever in the five boroughs it happens to be.
With the compliments of the concierge desk
Lists whose subject is not the thing on the plate — even where a plate arrives.
Rooms built around a sound system rather than a bar — from a Tribeca room that will hand you a card if you talk through the record, to a Bowery loft pouring tea at eleven in the morning.
Sorted by who will hear you sing — from a private room across 28th Street, through the song rooms of Koreatown, to a Lower East Side stage with a live band waiting behind you.
Sorted by what you are actually buying — an hour of someone’s hands, the run of a building for a day, or a seat in a session that starts and ends on the clock.
Ticketed, time-slotted and increasingly ambitious — the projection halls and art-and-technology rooms, with booking windows rather than opening hours.
In preparationThe antiquarian houses, the art and photography specialists, the general independents and the foreign-language rooms — four different errands that all go by one name.
Gyms, reformer studios, heated yoga rooms, bicycles, treadmills and a boxing gym across the street — sorted by what you want from the hour rather than by what the room calls itself.
One thing at a time, read across the whole city rather than one neighborhood at a time.
The coal ovens, the Neapolitan rooms, and the counters that sell it by the slice — from a sourdough slice four minutes from our door to a square eaten outdoors at the far end of Brooklyn.
Boiled, baked, and hand-rolled — where the difference is real and where it is only advertised.
In preparationGelato, soft serve, shaved ice and the older Italian counters that never left.
In preparationWhere the whisking is taken seriously, and where the ceremony is worth sitting down for.
In preparationThe roasters, the single-origin counters, and the rooms that will let you sit all morning.
In preparationChinese, Japanese, British and Persian — the tea rooms, and what each of them is actually for.
In preparationLaminated, filled, fried and iced — the bakeries worth crossing a bridge for.
In preparation