my guide for visiting NYC

This is not the definitive guide to visiting NYC. This is just the email I send to friends (both IRL and friends of the blog) when they visit, to share the things I like in this city that I think my kind of people will also be interested in.

Before getting to specific recommendations, my actual biggest recommendation is a social one: I highly recommend messaging anyone based in NYC who you think is interesting (either a blogger from the internet, or someone in your field) and asking to meet up. NYC is different from most places in the sense that nearly everyone here is not originally from here. Because of this transience, rather than sticking to the same small friend groups, people are very used to meeting new people. The city skews hyper-social, and few here have kids tying up their calendars. You’d be surprised at how many people will happily say yes to grabbing a coffee.

In terms of what to actually do, I highly recommend you see a jazz show when you’re in town. NYC is the hub and mecca of jazz for the entire world, and the kinds of shows you can see here simply do not exist anywhere else. This is partly because the kinds of jazz clubs that exist in NYC aren’t economically sustainable in other cities, but mostly because the majority of the world’s best jazz musicians actually live here. When they want to play with their friends or do random one-off gigs, they are only ever going to do it in NYC.

To see what’s playing on any given night, I recommend checking out the daily concert list at

https://tappedin.live/

If you don’t know enough about the music yourself, I still recommend going: just plug the listed performances into an AI, ask which will be the most interesting show to see on your specific dates, and go with that. If nothing stands out, default to one of the clubs I mention below as a backup, because they will all be excellent on any given day.

If you go to a jazz venue (and hopefully it’s the Village Vanguard) for a ticketed general admission show, I strongly recommend getting there very early (approx an hour before the show begins). At many of these small venues, being in the front row is a much richer experience than being stuck in a mediocre spot - and many of these venues offer many horrible seats.

My favourite jazz venue in NYC by far is the Village Vanguard, but only go here if there is a band playing that seems exciting or interesting to you. Watching a great artist from the front few rows at the Vanguard is one of my peak life experiences. It’s the most famous jazz venue in history for a reason.

Three other venues I like a lot and think you can go to almost any night, irrespective of who is playing, are:

• Ornithology: The best and coziest vibe, and very accessible - but in Bushwick.

• Bar Lunatico: Has a nice dinner option, so I actually recommend going there to eat, and it is very low-key and fun (in Bed-Stuy).

• Smalls: Great ambiance, but my main recommendation here is to go for their open jam session, which is what the club is most famous for. Professional musicians drop in to improvise and jam together. It happens every day from midnight to 4:00 AM, and on many weekend afternoons from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM. Admission is free. Check their website for the exact schedule.

There is no talking permitted at any of these venues during the shows, so don’t make plans there to socialize! The food at all jazz venues aside from Lunatico and Smoke Jazz Club is bad, so plan accordingly.

Food-wise, NYC specializes in two extremes: high-end, exorbitant dining, and very good ethnic food from pretty much everywhere in the entire world. While the city has a “good” version of practically everything, most of it is not special. If you’re looking for specific popular restaurants, a quick Reddit search of r/foodNYC will give you all the standard hits.

My main recommendation is to spend at least one day exploring an ethnic enclave outside of Manhattan (likely in Queens or Brooklyn) to eat. There are two important reasons for this. First, NYC is an enormous city, and to truly understand it, you need to realize it isn’t dominated by the people you see in Manhattan, but by everyone living in these entirely different worlds across the boroughs. Second, simply taking the subway an hour away and still seeing massive crowds of people is a really important perspective.

Some examples are: Chinese in Flushing, Central American in Corona, South Asian in Jackson Heights, Arab in Astoria, Yemeni in Bay Ridge, or former Soviet/Russian in Brighton Beach.

I recommend you spend an afternoon or evening in an enclave and eat at two to four different restaurants of that kind of cuisine. Often, when you step into one of these communities, every single person, shop, and conversation makes you feel like you’ve left the US entirely. The food is excellent, and it’s just a very rich cultural experience. If you live somewhere that doesn’t have an eg Senegalese or Yemeni restaurant, NYC is an amazing place to try cuisines you’ve never had before at a very high quality.

If you are interested in Jewish tourism, there is a lot of incredible Jewish food here that I love dearly: smoked fish, kugel, blintzes, babka, pastrami, etc. If you are craving a particular food, go look for a restaurant that has it. As for visiting Jewish neighbourhoods, the three big options are the Chabad headquarters at 770 in Crown Heights, the Satmar community in South Williamsburg, or a hodgepodge of different Orthodox communities in Boro Park. My recommendation is to go to South Williamsburg and get the babka at Oneg Bakery. South Williamsburg is the most accessible to where most visitors to NYC will be, while also being the most insular, jarring, and immersive—and the babka at Oneg is truly out of this world.

Since I don’t drink, if you are looking for late-night spots in lieu of cocktail bars, my girlfriend and I love going to Balthazar for dessert or french fries (it is very famous for its fries) or Din Tai Fung for their chocolate xiao long bao, which are genuinely exquisite and amongst the best foods I’ve ever eaten. You can go to Din Tai Fung any night without a reservation merely by joining their digital waitlist (which may be a 2ish-hour advance wait), so plan accordingly.

Beyond food and music, it might seem funny to suggest spending your NYC trip inside a movie theatre. In theory, you can watch the exact same movie anywhere. But there is a unique experience here that I really love. NYC has a handful of theatres that specialize in playing old and foreign films. Not only can you watch movies on the big screen here that you would never be able to see in a theatre anywhere else in the world, but you can do so in a room packed with enthusiastic, committed fans. It makes you feel a special appreciation for what you’re watching. You can check the daily screenings here:

https://www.screenslate.com/

I love tea, so I’m biased, but probably the most luxurious-feeling experience I’ve had in NYC is booking a private tea tasting and tea lesson with Roy from the New York Tea Society (https://www.newyorkteasociety.com/). It is both truly wonderful and an incredible value. It costs about $100 for a private session for two (by email appointment only). You get to try many different kinds of tea and learn a huge amount about it, all in a peaceful, serene space (in Midtown!) that feels like a total escape from the rest of the city. While doing a tea tasting has nothing to do with NYC itself, I’d argue that one of the best parts about New York is the sheer caliber of random, niche things you can do here.

I’d also recommend googling any specific interest you have alongside ‘NYC’ to find something related to your passions here. If you love Twin Peaks, maybe its exciting for you to visit the Twin Peaks themed coffee shop, or the if you love Borges, the Borges named library etc. There is something specific here for nearly every hobby and interest imaginable.

Ultimately, my favourite part of NYC is just the bigness and intensity of it all. To that end, I recommend spending a lot of time simply walking around Manhattan between Wall Street and Central Park (not those specific neighbourhoods, but the areas in between) to absorb the sheer density of humanity and ambition. There is no real need to walk north of where Central Park begins if your goal is people-watching, as the crowds and scenes are most densely concentrated below it.

If you feel like you must walk through Central Park, I recommend going at sunrise so you can watch the massive run clubs and huge number of eager go-getters running at incredibly fast paces before their intense corporate days begin. My favourite view in NYC is overlooking Central Park, where you can see the grass and trees surrounded by all the buildings. There are many spots for this, but the one I’ve been to is at the Darling bar.