The 100 Best Places to Drink and Stay in New York

1. The 50 #12 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. The 50 #9 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. James Beard Awards 2025 · Winner · Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service · Ignacio "Nacho" Jimenez

1. The 50 #39 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. The 50 #1 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. Spirited Awards 2025 · Winner · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 #41 · The World's 50 Best Bars
3. The 50 #35 · North America's 50 Best Bars

Crimson walls, floor cushions, and sculptures that look borrowed from a warehouse no one was using anyway: Schmuck is a cocktail bar on 1st Avenue that landed at number four on North America's 50 Best Bars in its first year open. The Barcelona sibling to Two Schmucks, it splits into a lounge side and a communal kitchen table side, so you can either settle in or make friends faster than planned.

1. The 50 #59 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. The 50 #4 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. VinePair Bar Program of the Year · The Next Wave Awards

Every suite has a working fireplace, which feels like a minor miracle in Midtown Manhattan. Aman New York is a hotel occupying the upper floors of the old Crown Building on Fifth Avenue, with 83 residential-style suites, a three-floor wellness complex mixing cryotherapy with Traditional Chinese Medicine, an omakase restaurant, and a speakeasy-style jazz club below. It holds three Michelin Keys and a spot on the World's 50 Best Hotels list.

1. Michelin Guide 3 Keys
2. AAA Five Diamonds
3. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

The building was once a carriage house, then a sculptor's studio, and now a three-level Japanese cocktail bar in Gramercy where the drinks are as considered as the history. The team behind it spent years at Angel's Share before going solo here, and it shows in every measured pour. Nikka whisky and yuzu turn up alongside immaculate riffs on classics. Named among North America's 50 Best Bars, and the room earns the quiet confidence.

1. The 50 #75 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. The 50 #23 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. Esquire The Best Bars in America

1. The 50 #46 · The World's 50 Best Bars
2. The 50 #33 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 4 Finalist · Best U.S. Cocktail Bar

A 24-hour light installation made from 2,000 LED-embedded Harcourt glasses greets you in the foyer, and that's just the warm-up. This Midtown luxury hotel, the crystal brand's first, sits across from MoMA and commits fully to the bit: silver-leaf paneling, pleated-silk walls, fresh roses in orb arrangements, and enough Baccarat crystal to humble a museum gift shop. Forbes Five Star and a Michelin Key. Resign yourself to being out-dressed by the lobby.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star
2. AAA Five Diamonds
3. Michelin Guide 1 Key

Perched above Eleven Madison Park and co-conceived by Daniel Humm and painter Francesco Clemente, this cocktail lounge wears its inspirations visibly, with Clemente's murals covering the walls in the spirit of Zurich's Kronenhalle Bar. Every cocktail on the menu is vegan and built with serious technical ambition, fermented ingredients and infused oils included. It landed at number fifteen on North America's 50 Best Bars in 2026.

1. The 50 #15 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Esquire Martini of the Year: Clemente Martini · The Best Martinis in America
3. VinePair Bartender of the Year · The Next Wave Awards · Sebastian Tollius

The cobblestone block it sits on feels more like a Soho mews than Soho, which is rather the point. This boutique hotel from the London-rooted Firmdale group layers bold English country house fabric and color against warehouse-style windows, so every room reads like a very confident decorator's private flat. A sculpture garden, a drawing room with an honor bar, and a Sunday Film Club keep the mood firmly residential. It holds a Michelin 3 Keys and a Forbes Four Star.

1. Michelin Guide 3 Keys
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. Time Out The Turkey Leg Sandwich · The 18 best sandwiches in the world right now
2. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The rooms start around the 35th floor, so Central Park and the Hudson are laid out below you like a diorama, and that view does a lot of the talking for a luxury hotel that also works hard to earn it. Wood paneling, marble, framed kimonos, and gold throw pillows signal the Mandarin group's Far Eastern aesthetic, carried off without feeling like a theme park. It holds a Forbes Five Star, and the spa alone draws guests who aren't even sleeping here.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star
2. AAA Five Diamonds
3. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The Beaux-Arts bones alone do a lot of the work here: Corinthian columns, marble staircases, chandeliers the size of small planets, and ceilings high enough to humble anyone who walks in overdressed. The Peninsula New York is a classic Fifth Avenue luxury hotel, the kind where the staff seems to know what you need before you do. It holds a Forbes Five Star and a Michelin Key, which tracks for a place this committed to doing the traditional thing without irony.

1. AAA Five Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star
3. Michelin Guide 1 Key

Butlers in white gloves and black tails unpack your bags and pour your morning coffee at this landmark Midtown hotel, a Forbes Five Star that has occupied Fifth Avenue's corner since before anyone you know was born. The marble staircases and original brass detailing survived a recent renovation intact, so the grand-hotel theatrics feel less like nostalgia and more like the building simply refusing to modernize its personality.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star
2. AAA Five Diamonds
3. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

There's no sign on Eldridge Street, just a faux tailor's shop window with a glowing "A" and a buzzer you'll wait at long enough to second-guess yourself. This is the cocktail bar that opened in the old Milk & Honey space after Sasha Petraske moved on, and it runs on the same no-menu, tell-us-what-you-like philosophy. North America's 50 Best Bars lists it, and the wait outside on any given night suggests people have read that list.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 #72 · The World's 50 Best Bars
3. The 50 #37 · North America's 50 Best Bars

1. The 50 #3 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 4 Finalist · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar
3. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Best New Bar

1. AAA Five Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star

1. VinePair Bar Program of the Year · The Next Wave Awards
2. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
3. The 50 #77 · North America's 50 Best Bars

Every American president since Truman has kept a suite here, which tells you roughly what kind of hotel The Carlyle is. It sits on the Upper East Side, one block from Central Park, and runs on old-world Manhattan formality so thick you feel underdressed just reading about it. Novelty, as the thinking goes, is for downtown. The Carlyle holds a spot on the World's 50 Best Hotels and two Michelin Keys, and neither comes as a surprise.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. AAA Four Diamonds
3. Michelin Guide 2 Keys

Two large trees grow inside the restaurant, peacock sconces line the walls, and a black lacquered cabinet of curiosities anchors the lobby, so you get the idea immediately. This hotel near the Flatiron pairs a historic mansion with a 24-story tower, both dressed in Martin Brudnizki's maximalist interiors. The World's 50 Best Hotels list ranks it, and Michelin awarded it 2 Keys. Bring a high tolerance for splendor.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Keys
2. The 50 #75 · The World's 50 Best Hotels
3. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

No two rooms share the same design at this 88-room Tribeca luxury hotel, where hand-laid Moroccan tiles might give way to Japanese lacquerware or Italian linens depending on which door you open. Belgian designer Axel Vervoordt pulled it together into something that reads less like a hotel than a well-traveled collector's apartment. It holds a spot on the World's 50 Best Hotels and a Michelin Key, and sits a block from the Hudson with good restaurants right outside.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. The 50 #77 · The World's 50 Best Hotels
3. Michelin Guide 1 Key

The Mark is a hotel on Madison Avenue where Jacques Grange's monochromatic striped marble and spearmint lacquered bathrooms do most of the talking before you've even unpacked. The Upper East Side address puts the Met two blocks away, though Jean-Georges Vongerichten's kitchen and a New York outpost of Caviar Kaspia make leaving feel like an unreasonable ask. Met Gala week, the lobby fills with people whose outfits are the reason museums exist. Michelin 2 Keys and a spot on the World's 50 Best Hotels list.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Keys
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
3. The 50 #43 · The World's 50 Best Hotels

Perched at the corner of Central Park South and Sixth Avenue, this 33-story Ritz-Carlton holds a Forbes Five Star and a Michelin Key, and earns both by feeling considerably smaller and quieter than it has any right to be. The rooms lean into a neutral palette with dark wood molding and plush club chairs, the kind of old-New York-club aesthetic that stops just short of stuffy. Central Park is right there, and somehow the street noise isn't.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star
2. AAA Five Diamonds
3. Michelin Guide 1 Key

I.M. Pei's only complete project in the Western hemisphere sits on 57th Street looking nothing like any other Four Seasons on earth, its limestone facade quarried from the same Burgundy source as the Louvre. This is a hotel that does not do understatement: standard rooms run 600 square feet, the lobby ceiling clears 33 feet, and the bathtubs fill in under a minute. Caramel Deco interiors, panoramic Midtown views, and a staff database that remembers your room-service habits from three years ago.

1. AAA Five Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
3. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Wood-burning fireplaces in a Manhattan hotel room are rare enough to feel like a rumor, but many suites here have one. The Lowell is an intimate Upper East Side hotel decorated like an English country house that somehow pulled it off, with floral fabrics, chinoiserie, and individually furnished rooms that never match a chain template. It holds a Michelin Key and a Forbes Four Star. The Pembroke Room does afternoon tea; the Post House does steakhouse duty downstairs.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
3. Michelin Guide 1 Key

The 24-karat gold-plated faucets in every bathroom are either the most New York thing imaginable or the most New York thing imaginable. This grand luxury hotel sits at the southeast corner of Central Park in French Renaissance splendor, with Beaux-Arts interiors that have hosted everyone from the Beatles to Eloise. The Forbes Four Star Palm Court still serves afternoon tea, and the Champagne Bar exists, which says everything.

1. AAA Five Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
3. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

One of NoMad's tallest towers, designed by Rafael Viñoly, gives every room a view that slides from the Empire State Building down to the Statue of Liberty. This Ritz-Carlton plays it contemporary rather than fusty, and the interiors manage to please both the old-guard luxury crowd and guests who know their architects. José Andrés runs the culinary side, with a mezze restaurant and a Spanish-Japanese hybrid on the floors below. A Michelin Key and Forbes Four Star.

1. AAA Five Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
3. Michelin Guide 1 Key

A grandfather clock by Maarten Baas sits in the lobby, its face replaced by a video of a man hand-painting the time, continuously. That sets the tone for this 86-room Midtown boutique hotel from London's Firmdale Hotels, where padded fabric wallpaper and original art fill rooms that look nothing like the rest of the neighborhood. A Forbes Four Star and three Michelin Keys for a property that treats Kit Kemp's textile instincts as a design brief.

1. Michelin Guide 3 Keys
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

A black glass tower at Columbus Circle, right where Midtown meets Central Park, and a Forbes Five Star hotel that takes the personal-attaché thing as a given rather than a talking point. The 176 rooms come with floor-to-ceiling windows and a lot of marble, and the park views feel like a private arrangement rather than a lucky coincidence. Gilded bathroom fixtures and Christofle trays set the decorative register pretty clearly.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Five Star
2. AAA Four Diamonds

The bronze double doors open onto something that feels more like a quietly loaded private club than a hotel lobby. Occupying the lower floors of the One57 skyscraper on Billionaires' Row, with Carnegie Hall across the street, this luxury hotel dresses its common areas as a "Study" and a "Living Room," which is either charming or a bit on the nose, depending on your mood. A Forbes Four Star property.

1. AAA Five Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
3. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A mirror-glass tower rising above SoHo's cast-iron rooflines, the Dominick earns its height with Hudson River views that most of the neighborhood can't touch. It's a full-service luxury hotel with Fendi Casa furnishings, a Rockwell Group interior, a rooftop pool lined in Italian blue mosaic, and a spa with separate hammams. The lobby's bronze, leather, and Venetian plaster set a tone that the rooms, with their soaking tubs and Turkish stone walls, are happy to maintain.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. AAA Four Diamonds
3. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Pink roses and ginger flower greet you at the door, a signature touch that signals how seriously The Langham takes the small stuff. This Forbes Four Star hotel sits on Fifth Avenue within easy reach of Midtown's big landmarks, drawing business travelers and visitors alike. "Service stylists" gather your preferences before you even arrive, handling show tickets, dinner reservations, and checkout times, so the city feels a little less like a logistics problem.

1. AAA Five Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
3. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. The 50 #71 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Esquire The Best Bars in America
3. Esquire Cartagena · The Best Martinis in America

The Art Deco facade on East 76th Street hasn't changed, but the inside was gutted and reimagined by Martin Brudnizki, which is why this Upper East Side hotel now reads more Corinthia than classic New York dowager. Casa Tua, the members' club with outposts in Miami and Aspen, runs the dining room, so the crowd skews accordingly. It holds a Michelin Key and a Forbes Four Star.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
3. Michelin Guide 1 Key

Marble bar, leather chairs, thick linens, and windows looking straight down Fifth Avenue: Ai Fiori is a formal Italian restaurant on the second floor of the Langham Hotel that telegraphs expense account before you've ordered drinks. The kitchen leans Italian with enough invention to keep it interesting, and the room is polished enough that nobody's rushing you. Gracious service throughout lunch and dinner.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. AAA Four Diamonds
3. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The New York Public Library sits directly across the street, which sets the tone nicely for a hotel that takes its Midtown address seriously. Rooms run loft-style with modernist touches, the bar downstairs shifts from local-sourced comfort food into a low-lit speakeasy after dark, and Grand Central is a two-block walk. A Forbes Four Star property on Fifth Avenue, it handles the neighborhood's ambitions without making you feel like you wandered into a showroom.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. AAA Four Diamonds
3. Time Out The 35 best hotels in New York City

1. Esquire Candarin Orange · The Best Martinis in America
2. Punch Best New Bars
3. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Best New Bar

The long wooden bar came out of a Pennsylvania mining-town dance hall and has been anchoring this Smith Street cocktail bar ever since. Victorian paneling, a tin ceiling, and a curtained parlor with a fireplace in the back make the whole room feel like someone's very well-stocked study. The cocktails are precise and the eponymous Clover Club is on the menu, naturally. The kind of place that makes Brooklyn feel older than it is.

1. VinePair Industry Icon of the Year · The Next Wave Awards
2. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
3. Time Out #8 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now

A 13-story Sol LeWitt mural dominates the atrium lobby, bouncing blue and purple across a cable-and-aluminum sculpture, which is quite the check-in distraction. This all-suite hotel in Battery Park City sits closer to Wall Street than to anything edgy, but the rooftop lounge on the 16th floor, with Hudson River and Statue of Liberty views, softens the corporate geometry considerably. Forbes Four Star.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. AAA Four Diamonds
3. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Highballs and boilermakers anchor the menu at this jovial Japanese cocktail bar tucked into a Greenwich Village basement, where the drinks list stays refreshingly short and Japanese spirits do most of the talking. It landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list, which feels about right for a room that punches well above its unpretentious footprint. Go for the sake selection if you're curious; stay for the cocktails once you are.

1. The 50 #52 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Spirited Awards 2024 · Top 4 Finalist · U.S. Bartender of the Year · Masa Urushido
3. Time Out #18 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now

A four-tap absinthe drip at the center of the bar is a replica of the one at the Absinthe House in New Orleans, and that tells you most of what you need to know. Maison Premiere is a cocktail and oyster bar in Williamsburg that commits fully to the bit: dim golden light, mock antique everything, marble bar top, the faint sense that you've wandered into another city and century. It landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list, which tracks.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 #40 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. The New York Times 2013 · Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review

A rippled-wave glass exterior by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill makes this luxury hotel one of the more convincing arguments for Midtown's new Manhattan West development. Inside, Gachot Studios kept things calm and contemporary, which helps when the neighborhood outside is doing its usual impression of controlled chaos. Zou Zou's handles Eastern Mediterranean, Bar Pendry handles cocktails by firelight, and the Forbes Four Star and two Michelin Keys handle the expectations.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. Michelin Guide 2 Keys

The lobby is a long, dim, Art Deco-inspired corridor that makes you walk past a very glamorous staircase before you find the front desk, which is a choice. This Midtown hotel is Sofitel's North American flagship, 29 floors a short walk from Bryant Park, and the whole thing leans into a Franco-New York elegance that stops just short of being a bit much. Rooms are quiet and well-dressed, and the staff keeps things moving.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
3. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Hand-painted murals from the hotel's early days line the walls, even in the fitness center, now sharing space with Indian artwork brought over from Taj's Mumbai flagship. The Pierre is a grand, old-school luxury hotel on Fifth Avenue at Central Park, Georgian Revival bones dressed in a mix of eras. Bathrooms have separate tubs and showers, the Grand Ballroom seats 750 under silver and gold ceilings, and brides have been dreaming of it forever. Forbes Four Star.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
3. Time Out The 35 best hotels in New York City

A brick-and-glass facade on West 38th Street opens into a lobby that looks more like a gastropub than a hotel check-in, which is either disorienting or a relief depending on how your day went. The 180 rooms lean into garment-district history with subway-tiled bathrooms and chesterfield sofas, and the service carries a studied, almost theatrical attentiveness. A Michelin Selected Hotel a short walk from Bryant Park.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
3. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. The 50 #36 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Time Out #20 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now
3. Spirited Awards 2026 · Top 10 Nominee · Best U.S. Restaurant Bar

The 1906 Beaux-Arts ferry terminal at the foot of Manhattan is an unlikely setting for a boutique hotel, but Casa Cipriani leans into that tension hard. Rooms face either the ornate landmarked shell or the harbor, and the river-side views have no competition in the city. The Cipriani name means a certain brand of hushed Italian luxury, all pale linen and restrained glamour. The Jazz Café models itself on a prewar supper club, with live music most nights. Michelin awarded it 3 Keys.

1. Michelin Guide 3 Keys
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

A full page of negronis is either a menu or a dare, and Dante in Greenwich Village has been inviting people to find out for longer than anyone cares to count. This Italian cocktail cafe and all-day aperitivo spot leans into its old-school bones without getting musty about it, pairing the drinks with burrata and charcuterie. Named a James Beard Outstanding Bar semifinalist and ranked on North America's 50 Best Bars list.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 #58 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. Esquire Dante Mini Martini · The Best Martinis in America

A fortune-teller in the window is not a gimmick so much as a promise about the evening ahead. Past the red velvet curtains, this art deco cocktail bar on Hudson Street runs to carved wood, marble floors, a tin ceiling, and an onyx fireplace, all of it suggesting you should order something serious and stay a while. It landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list, which the regulars probably already knew.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 #95 · The World's 50 Best Bars
3. The 50 #45 · North America's 50 Best Bars

The fitness brand that colonized every upscale neighborhood in Manhattan eventually had to sleep somewhere, and Hudson Yards is where it landed. This luxury hotel pairs ultra-modern rooms with a 60,000-square-foot gym, a rooftop pool over the Hudson, and a spa that runs from cryotherapy to specialized facials. The architecture is by SOM, the interiors by Rockwell Group, and the vibe is less "hotel with a gym" than "wellness resort that happens to have beds." Forbes Four Star.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels
3. Time Out The 35 best hotels in New York City

A cowhide rug and leather couches give the lobby of this 126-room Financial District hotel the feel of a well-appointed men's club, which is either exactly your thing or quietly amusing depending on your disposition. Gold Street is a cab-hailing hike from most of the action, but the tradeoff is genuine quiet after dark. Frette bathrobes and C.O. Bigelow toiletries round out the rooms.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
2. AAA Three Diamonds
3. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Vaulted ceilings, pink Tennessee marble floors, and Botticino marble walls set the tone the moment you walk into this Lower East Side hotel, housed in a beautifully restored Edwardian bank building. The Neo-Renaissance bones are dramatic without trying too hard, which is fitting for a neighborhood that has always preferred cool to obvious. Tastemakers and the occasional celebrity fill the lobby. Michelin awarded it 2 Keys.

1. Michelin Guide 2 Keys
2. Time Out The 35 best hotels in New York City
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The pyramidal glass skylight hovering over eight tiers of cast iron railings is the kind of thing you look up at and forget what you were doing. This Financial District boutique hotel, a Michelin Key holder, occupies an 1881 building whose atrium alone draws people who aren't even staying. Rooms have the soaring ceilings the Victorian bones promise, and the neighborhood keeps things quieter than Midtown without feeling remote.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
3. Michelin Guide 1 Key

A cocktail bar in the Financial District built around the legend of John Morrissey, a bare-knuckle Irish immigrant who ran one of the city's rougher gangs in the 1800s. The menu reads like a graphic novel, each volume dropping the Rabbit into a new era of New York's murkier chapters. The drinks are theatrical without being silly, and the Irish pub downstairs keeps things grounded for anyone who just wants a pint.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
3. Esquire Steakhouse Martini #2 · The Best Martinis in America

The big neon sign out front survived the gap years when nothing else did, and it still draws you in off Atlantic Avenue. This Art Deco bar in Cobble Hill has been around forever, and Toby Cecchini, the bartender who invented the Cosmopolitan, brought it back to life with the booths and floral wallpaper more or less intact. The kitchen does a Reuben and a double-patty burger, but the cocktails are what fill the room on a Tuesday.

1. VinePair Industry Icon of the Year · The Next Wave Awards
2. Time Out #11 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now
3. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars in NYC

Rooms done entirely in white, with two greenery-filled terraces, sit about as far as you can get from the neon circus outside without actually leaving Times Square. Ian Schrager, the man who gave the world Studio 54, brought his boutique instincts to one of the least boutique corners on earth, and the hotel is quieter and more serene than it has any right to be. A nightclub downstairs keeps the old faith.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
3. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Wildsam The 50 Most Essential Bars in America
2. Esquire The Best Bars in America
3. Esquire King Tusk · The Best Martinis in America

Pearl shells in the bathrooms are not the usual Financial District flex, but the Paspaleys, an Australian pearl-harvesting family, own this 180-room luxury boutique hotel and it shows throughout. The Beaux-Arts building has been around forever, once housing the original New York Stock Exchange, and it now holds Aboriginal art, vintage family photos, and a lobby lounge stocked with coffee-table books. It holds a Michelin Key.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide 1 Key
3. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

Every room at this Williamsburg hotel comes with its own city-view balcony, which tells you roughly what you're dealing with. The rooftop holds a 15,000-square-foot public park with rolling hills and picnic blankets, so it doubles as a neighborhood hangout rather than a private amenity. The interior leans into the borough's art-forward instincts without overdoing it, and the skyline views from up top are the kind that make Manhattan feel like a reasonable commute.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
3. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A Beaux-Arts building from 1911 meeting W Hotels' anything-but-1911 sensibility is exactly as entertaining as it sounds. The Rockwell Group handled this hotel's original 2001 debut and came back to renovate it, which either shows loyalty or a need to finish what they started. The Living Room lobby has soaring ceilings and marble columns that read a little Grand Central, and a rooftop bar sits up on the 22nd floor for anyone who needs a view with their cocktail.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
3. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. VinePair Drinks Professional of the Year · The Next Wave Awards · Meaghan Dorman
2. Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 4 Finalist · Best U.S. Hotel Bar
3. Time Out #26 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now

1. Esquire 1884 Martini · The Best Martinis in America
2. Esquire The Best Bars in America
3. Spirited Awards 2025 · Top 10 U.S. Nominee · Best U.S. Hotel Bar

The wide black awning stretches almost the full width of Park Avenue, which tells you everything about the register this hotel is playing in. It's a luxury Upper East Side property with an old-money residential feel, rooms styled like Manhattan apartments, and the kind of quietly confident lobby that makes newcomers stand up a little straighter. Central Park is a short walk, Madison Avenue boutiques are closer still.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
3. Time Out The 35 best hotels in New York City

The grand staircase descending from the Villard Mansion gates is the kind of entrance that makes you feel like you've arrived somewhere, even if you live nearby. This midtown luxury hotel spreads across a landmarked 19th-century mansion and a modern tower, with marble bathrooms, deep beds, and work desks in the standard rooms. The Triplex Suites climb to 5,000 square feet with Art Deco details and private rooftop terraces, if you're keeping score.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
3. Time Out The 35 best hotels in New York City

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. Esquire The Best Bars in America
3. The 50 Julie Reiner · Industry Icon Award

Ian Schrager's Lower East Side hotel skips the front desk entirely: check-in happens when a "PUBLIC Advisor" finds you in the lobby. The idea behind the place is that luxury and accessibility don't have to be mutually exclusive, which sounds like a tagline until you see it in practice. It's on the World's 50 Best Hotels list, and the Michelin Guide has it selected. Stylish without the velvet-rope attitude, which in New York counts for something.

1. The 50 SevenRooms Icon Award 2025 · The World's 50 Best Hotels · Ian Schrager
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
3. Time Out The 35 best hotels in New York City

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide 1 Key
3. Time Out The 35 best hotels in New York City

The Art Deco murals were under plaster for years while the restoration crew worked, which is its own kind of story. Now back on Park Avenue after a long absence, the Waldorf Astoria is a grand full-service hotel with residential-style suites, the Guerlain Spa, and a brasserie from chef Michael Anthony. The public spaces are the main event: silver corridors, soaring ceilings, and a Grand Ballroom that still knows exactly what it is.

1. AAA Five Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The lobby never quite decides if it's a hotel or a party, which is exactly the point. Ace Hotel New York anchors NoMad with a ground floor that shifts from laptop-open co-working in the afternoon to a full DJ set by midnight, all without anyone changing rooms. The rooms upstairs are what you'd expect from the chain that made "hip hotel" a genre: raw edges, good sound systems, and guests who pack light.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The unmarked door on the second floor of a Japanese restaurant looks exactly like where a broom lives, which is precisely the point. Angel's Share is a speakeasy-style cocktail bar with booth banquettes, bare brick, velvet curtains, and lighting set to confession-booth low. It landed on North America's 50 Best Bars list, and the room feels like it has always known that. Come early, come two, and find the door before someone else needs the mop.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The 50 #31 · North America's 50 Best Bars
3. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars in NYC

The Sakura Martini, a sake-and-gin affair finished with a salted cherry blossom, is the thing people come back for at this tiny, warmly lit cocktail bar on Eldridge Street. Kenta Goto spent years at Pegu Club before opening this place, and the short menu of original drinks leans on Japanese ingredients, house infusions, and a quieter kind of precision. Small enough that nobody is a stranger for long.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Esquire Sakura Martini · The Best Martinis in America
3. Punch Best New Bartenders · Capucine Prager

A graffiti installation called the Museum of Street Art lines the walls, which feels right for a hotel sitting on the Bowery. citizenM keeps things pod-sized and self-serve: contactless check-in, wall-to-wall king beds that eat most of the room, and a clean modern bathroom. When the walls close in, the Living Room downstairs absorbs you, with a grab-and-go bar alongside. The New Museum is a block north, and the Lower East Side is right outside.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Esquire Garden State Martini · The Best Martinis in America
2. Esquire The Best Bars in America
3. Punch Best New Bartenders · Ricardo Rodriguez

The name comes from Milton, and the bar takes the premise seriously: this is a tropical hellscape, not a luau. Paradise Lost is a tiki bar in the East Village that keeps the piña coladas and mai tais but drops the cheerful kitsch for something a little more Beelzebub. The décor leans sinister in ways that reward a second look. Esquire named it one of the best bars in America in 2024, and the Spirited Awards shortlisted it for Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar.

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America
2. Spirited Awards 2024 · Top 4 Finalist · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The marble lobby hits differently than the apartment-block facade suggests, with crimson and gold antique furnishings that lean firmly Old World rather than midtown generic. This boutique hotel on East 50th sits within walking distance of Rockefeller Center, Grand Central, and Central Park, which makes it genuinely useful for both the suit-and-briefcase crowd and tourists who want classic New York hospitality without the chain-hotel shuffle.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

That Gothic minaret rising over Fifth Avenue is how you spot The Sherry-Netherland from two blocks away, which is a very old-money way to announce a hotel. It's been around forever, a proper residential-style property with just 50 rooms, each one decorated differently, many of them looking straight onto Central Park. The smallest rooms run 340 square feet, and the marble lobby with its vaulted ceiling sets the tone for something quietly grand.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

Its own private entrance on 50th Street bypasses the main hotel entirely, which tells you most of what you need to know about The Towers at Lotte New York Palace. A hotel-within-a-hotel occupying the top floors of the Palace, it comes with a dedicated concierge and rooms that look out over Rockefeller Center and the Empire State Building. Gossip Girl fans will recognize the Corner Suites. Everyone else is just happy the crowds stayed downstairs.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

Floor-to-ceiling windows look straight across the East River at the Lower Manhattan skyline, a view few New York hotels can match. This eco-minded luxury hotel sits at the edge of Brooklyn Bridge Park, where salvaged materials and low-impact design feel less like a brand statement and more like a natural fit for a waterfront that was industrial wasteland not so long ago. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Key.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide 1 Key
3. Time Out The 35 best hotels in New York City

Full-length windows do a lot of heavy lifting at this NoMad hotel, where the rooms are compact by any honest measure but bright enough that you stop noticing. Arlo has figured out that good light and a smart layout can substitute for square footage, which matters when the alternative is paying Manhattan prices for a room that feels like a sensory deprivation tank. A solid, unpretentious option in a neighborhood that keeps improving.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The self-check-in kiosk where a reception desk would normally be sets the tone: citizenM runs lean so the rooms can punch above their price point in Times Square, which is a minor miracle of real estate math. Compact king rooms come with wall-to-wall windows, Italian linens, and a touchpad that controls lighting, movies, and the mood. The lobby lounge and rooftop bar are genuinely meant to be used, not just photographed.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A rooftop bar on the 54th floor is the easy sell, but the rooms are the real argument for staying here. This Times Square hotel leans into color and personality where its neighbors lean into beige, and the layout is unusually generous for midtown. Transit connections run in every direction, and the Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels. First-timers to New York will find the location hard to argue with.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The deskless check-in is a small thing that signals a larger intention: this is a full-service hotel in the Financial District that isn't trying to cosplay a Midtown business tower. Bold lobby colors and dark bathrooms in the rooms lean into a design sensibility the neighborhood itself has gradually adopted, leaving the old Gotham gravitas uptown where it belongs. A fitness center, spa, and two in-house restaurants round out the stay.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels
3. Time Out The 35 best hotels in New York City

1. The 50 #66 · North America's 50 Best Bars
2. Eater The Best New Bars in New York City

The neon sign and wrought-iron balconies have been drawing poets, musicians, and general troublemakers to this West Chelsea hotel for generations. A recent restoration brought it back without sanding off the mythology, which is a harder trick than it sounds. Rooms feel like somewhere a person could actually live, which many people famously did. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key. Dylan Thomas drank here; Taylor Swift wrote a song about it.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key
2. Time Out The 35 best hotels in New York City
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Rooms that look like a glamorous private residence someone actually lives in, not a set dressed to suggest one. The Manner is a boutique hotel on Thompson Street that trades the minimalist downtown look, and its beige "quiet luxury" cousin, for richly colored, heavily textured interiors. The ground-floor restaurant and cocktail bar pull in their own crowd, but the hotel itself stays on the discreet side of the equation.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A Turkish hammam and a mosaic-lined pool tucked beneath a Beaux Arts tower on 32nd Street is about as New York a contradiction as you'll find. The Marmara Park Avenue is a 128-room luxury hotel where designer Joe Ginsberg's taste runs the show: brass-inlaid concrete floors, Mylar wall coverings, velvet everywhere, and custom wallpaper drawn from his own photographs of a Bronx bridge. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Pastels and soft watercolors replace the old primary-color scheme after a Rockwell Group renovation, which is genuinely good news when you're sleeping a few floors above Midtown's noise machine. The Time New York is a boutique-ish hotel a short walk from Times Square, with rooms that are compact but quietly pulled together, Frette linens, Margiela bathrobes, and suites for when compact just won't do.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The Burger Joint, a self-consciously divey counter slinging smash patties, is tucked behind a curtain in an otherwise polished lobby, which tells you something about this hotel's sense of humor. Thompson Central Park is a high-end boutique hotel in upper Midtown, rebuilt from a legacy property with mid-century Modernist bones courtesy of architect Thomas Juul-Hansen. Upper floors look out over Central Park.

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels
3. Time Out The 35 best hotels in New York City

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America
2. Esquire Cigarette Martini · The Best Martinis in America
3. The Infatuation The Best Cocktail Bars in NYC

The lobby is as big as a city block and designed, without apology, for people who will open a laptop in it. Ace Hotel Brooklyn is a Michelin Key hotel sitting on the edge of Boerum Hill, where the industrial bones and deliberately low-key atmosphere draw the kind of guests who prefer brownstone streets over Midtown. The Brooklyn Heights Promenade is a short walk, and the ground floor bar handles the rest of your evening.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key
2. Time Out The 35 best hotels in New York City
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Bitters are both the obsession and the inventory at this tiny East Village cocktail bar, which also sells an overwhelming wall of the stuff to take home. A dozen seats, a menu split between house originals and riffs on classics, and a bespoke option built around a Negroni, Manhattan, or Old-Fashioned if you'd rather just tell them what you're feeling. House-made vermouth pours on tap. A James Beard semifinalist, and the kind of place that makes you feel smarter for having gone.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Wildsam The 50 Most Essential Bars in America
3. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Restaurateur · Ravi DeRossi - Overthrow Hospitality

A glass-enclosed rooftop bar with unobstructed Manhattan skyline views is a reasonable argument for crossing the bridge. This Wythe Avenue hotel occupies a striking eight-story building in brick, glass, and weathered steel, with double-height guest rooms fitted out in custom furniture that leans toward retro modernism with a bit of prewar New York texture. An Eastern Mediterranean restaurant sits off the lobby for when you'd rather not wander far.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Huckberry The 50 Best Dive Bars in America
2. Time Out #28 · The 30 best bars in NYC right now

The name "Theta" does hint at a quieter frequency than the surrounding blocks would suggest. This Kimpton hotel on 8th Avenue puts you a short walk from the Theater District, Hell's Kitchen, and the Rockefeller Center chaos, which makes it a practical midtown base without requiring you to sleep directly under a billboard. The 364 rooms lean calm and polished in the way the Kimpton brand tends to, a reliable counterpoint to the neighborhood's volume.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. Time Out The 35 best hotels in New York City

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels