You’re reading Best of New York, a monthly recap of the city’s very best restaurants, bars, arts, culture, shopping, etc. etc. It’s not necessarily the latest, greatest, newest, hottest (but those spots find their way in, too); it’s simply the places that made the city sing for us every month that we think you might like, too.
I am grateful to live in, what I consider, the prettiest neighborhood in Manhattan, the Upper West Side. Cradled by two beautiful parks, I can always take my dog for a walk in Central Park or go for a run up or down Riverside for an immediate endorphin hit. Whenever I’m waiting for the cross-town bus by the Natural History Museum, I turn my face into the sun and breathe a big meditative sigh of gratitude for the beauty of the London planetrees and gingko bilobas towering above Theodor Roosevelt Park. All of this is a balm when the world feels dark or I’m feeling blue. And it was put to the test the day after the election.
It was an unseasonably warm and sunny 78 degree November day in Manhattan. I threw the Dialectics of Enlightenment, the first volume of Tennessee Williams’s complete works and a notebook into my bag and never opened any of them (lol whatever). I picked up a sandwich and headed to the Great Lawn in Central Park to loll around in the sunshine.
I thought of the day after the 2016 election. I was living in an oceanfront condo on South Beach and I went down to the beach, feeling bruised and battered, submerged myself in the ocean, lay in the sand and felt the hot sun against my wet skin and thought, thank God I at least have this. (At that time, Miami-Dade was still a blue county, which was also a comfort. It no longer is.) In Central Park, I basked in the same gratitude for a disorienting warm, beautiful fall day in New York City.
This month, I’ve been particularly sensitive to how I can take comfort in this moment of profound disappointment and grief.
Sandwiches
Orwasher’s is where I turned the day after the election for a turkey sandwich to take to the park. It was the only thing I could really stomach. There’s something nourishing and comforting, reminiscent of childhood, about a simple sandwich. And this sandwich was perfect. Heated up in the oven, the baguette was crispy and tender, the white cheddar melted and gooey. And they give you a pickle.
Until very recently, I didn’t understand Orwasher’s. My new favorite sandwiches, already prepared for grab-and-go was a fact I’d previously turned my nose up about. I’d gone once for a bagel with scallion cream cheese and, even though they freshly chopped the scallion (an incredible move I’ve since emulated), it didn’t leave a lasting impression. The storefront and branding gives the feeling of a chain, although it’s a Hungarian bakery that’s been around since 1916 (with an original location on the Upper East Side). It can also be a chaotic mob scene on the weekends—not a mob of crazed insurrectionists, just a bunch of Upper West Siders in lightweight Patagonia jackets with strollers in need of coffee and a marble rye.
I now understand. Everything at Orwasher’s is delicious and comforting and fresh: all of the sandwiches, the pain au chocolate, the rugelach, the donuts (they even hand-fill jelly donuts the moment you order them, a miracle).
Spa
One thing Central Park lacks is salt water immersion. Short of taking the train to Rockaway Beach, the next best thing I could come up with was a day at QC Spa (at top) on Governor’s Island. This place is a godsend for frazzled New Yorkers. Situated on the grounds of former military barracks (it’s more fun to pretend it was an insane asylum), the spa occupies two brick buildings and a front yard with picture perfect views of Lower Manhattan and the gleaming Freedom Tower. There are more than 20 spa experiences, including outdoor heated hydrotherapy pools to circuit through and a maze of indoor steam rooms, saunas, bathing experiences and relaxation rooms.
There’s an onsite café and bar when you need a little nourishment and massages are also available. I booked a five-hour day pass, which is plenty of time to enjoy without hurry. Since they’re open until 10 p.m. on weekdays and 11 p.m. on weekends, though, I could have easily stuck around and drifted into total nirvana. Next time.
Seaport
A trip to QC is a good excuse to swing by the Tin Building by Jean-Georges at the Seaport. I like being down there, marveling at the tall ships and imagining I’m Ishmael ready to shove off and explore the “watery part of the world.” (After all, it’s “whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul…” and I feel the urge to knock the hats off of everyone I see that I know it’s “high time to get to sea…”)
The Tin Building is a food hall and market with over a dozen concepts by the acclaimed chef. In my book, Jean-Georges can (practically) do no wrong. (A caveat: his eponymous restaurant continues to operate inside a hotel and tower on Central Park West bearing the name of our former and future president—some shit that José Andrés would never put up with.) We tucked into the marble-topped bar of the seafood restaurant on the main floor. The gem lettuce salad with carrot ginger dressing was delightful, an upscale rendition of the requisite salad course at a Japanese hibachi grill. (Jean-Georges makes my favorite salads.) We also enjoyed calamari, tuna tartare and fish & chips.
The Strand
The week Lili Anolik’s dual biography Didion & Babitz came out, I rushed to The Strand to grab a copy. Along with most of the literary press, it’s one of my most anticipated books of the year. I love both Joan Didion and Eve Babitz to the point of obsession, although clearly not as much as Anolik who already wrote a biography on Eve and discovered, after her death in 2021, boxes of correspondence between her and Didion, further illuminating the sometimes strained, sometimes tender friendship between the two California literary lionesses.
If I were handing out awards, I’d anoint Didion the greatest American nonfiction writer of the 20th century. Her cold, hard prose is astounding. She’s the voice I most want to read on literally any subject; a national treasure. But it’s Eve who I relate to and absolutely adore. She’s been on my mind a lot in the wake of the election, trying to find solace in New York—the difference between Central Park and South Beach or, for Eve, the Pacific Ocean. She and I are both Southern California natives and I love her side-eyed Angeleno observations of the frenzied pace and unforgiving landscape of New York City.
At the end of an essay in Eve’s Hollywood, about the year she spent in New York (“I went … on March 6th, 1966 and left on March 5th, 1967. One year.”), she writes about how there’s no space “just to think” here. “You’re always being pushed from behind. It’s like a tunnel with no sky.” And I guess that’s how I’ve been feeling lately.
If you need a primer on either author: Slow Days, Fast Company for Eve. For Joan, I’d start with The White Album or do yourself a favor and just get the Everyman’s Library collection of her nonfiction, which you will savor for years to come.
While I was at The Strand, Notes From an Island by Swedish author Tove Jansson caught my eye, chronicling the bitter autumn of 1963 when she “raced to build a cabin on a treeless island in the Gulf of Finland” with her artist girlfriend. As if that were not enough, Jansson had me at her first sentence: “I love rock—” which continues, “sheer cliffs that drop straight into the ocean, unscalable mountains, pebbles in my pocket.”
Hamilton
And speaking of national treasures, I finally saw Hamilton, the musical masterpiece by Lin-Manuel Miranda. After catching “Oh, Mary!” and Suffs (which, like Hamilton, was developed at The Public) this season, I was inspired to finally see this blockbuster musical of American history. I realize I’m late to the party. I’ve wanted to see the show since it premiered nearly a decade ago, but for whatever reason, it always eluded me.
And while it feels like our country is drifting into uncharted territory, farther and farther from the ideals of our Founding Fathers, in watching this piece of modern theater about America’s foundation some 250 years ago, I recognized the strands of DNA that formed our country today—revolutions, political violence, sex scandals, wildly opposed interpretations of what freedom means, the original riff between North and South, foreign allies and adversaries, the ceding of power and jockeying for it.
The current Broadway cast is sensational, in case you want to revisit it or, like me, experience it for the first time. And I’m excited that I can finally watch the original cast production on Disney+ now.
Saturday nights
Put me in a spacious dining room with Italian mid-century chandeliers dripping from the ceiling, dark wood interiors and olive accents in the form of velvet curtains and I’ll be a happy girl. This was essentially the environment I found myself in on a recent Saturday night at Principe in Soho. A seafood-forward Italian restaurant that opened last year with a well-edited menu, I’ve added it to my “restaurants for grownups in Manhattan” file. The food was pretty darn good, if not great. I especially enjoyed the fluke carpaccio and rock shrimp malfadine and, while the flavors were there in the grilled hanger steak with celeriac and peppercorn sauce, it was a little chewy.
Afterwards, we stumbled into Milady’s where two seats at the bar miraculously materialized the moment we arrived. It is a silly neighborhood bar with a disco ball and a playful cocktail program by the heavyweight team behind Pegu Club, a bar that made me feel cool whenever I was there back in my twenties. I opted for a sherry-laden martini and my friend tried the “Cornbread Old Fashioned” with reposado, bourbon and a corn liqueur.
The crowd was convivial and chatty, including a boy who thought podcasting might be his passion, but was moving back to Minnesota the next day after giving New York a try for one month, bless his heart. At one point, a bubble machine gun materialized from behind the bar while Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas” blared over the sound system. It was just the right amount of unhinged merriment for a mid-November night in 2024.
