Penn District

Sesame semolina loaves cut to order and filled with prosciutto and fresh mozzarella, from the SoHo shop that opened on Sullivan Street in 1986. No substitutions, and they mean it.

Mon to Fri, 7am to 8pm. Sat and Sun, 10am to 4pm

The burger that hid behind a curtain in a Midtown hotel lobby for twenty years, now at a counter in the food hall. Cheeseburger and fries. The line moves.

Daily, 9am to 10pm

Twenty-four hour Koreatown standby. Order the ggomtang, the beef broth they have been pulling since 1978.

Open 24 hours

Coffee and shaved ice on West 32nd until eleven most nights and midnight on a weekend. The injeolmi bingsu is built for a table of four and takes a while to get through.

Sun to Wed, 11am to 11pm. Thu, to 11:30pm. Fri and Sat, to midnight

A triangle of movable chairs under plane trees between Broadway and Sixth, with ping pong tables at one end and a clean public restroom at the other. Horace Greeley sits in the middle looking unimpressed.

Daily, 7am to 10pm. Restroom 8am to 10pm

Sul lung tang around the clock, the milky ox bone broth you salt yourself at the table. Ten minutes from the Garden and it has never closed.

Open 24 hours

Korean fiction and magazines downstairs, with a tea counter on the second floor where you can sit. It has been on this block for close to thirty years.

Mon to Sat, 10am to 9pm. Sun, 11am to 7pm

Ride up past the fifth floor and the escalators turn to ash and oak, the last working wooden ones anywhere. They have been carrying people since the 1920s and they still creak.

Roughly daily, 11am to 9pm. Confirm before a late arrival

The old Farley post office sorting floor, reopened in 2021 under a glass roof. Kehinde Wiley set a stained glass ceiling over the 33rd Street entrance and Stan Douglas lined the walls with staged photographs of a single day in the old station in 1957.

Daily, 5am to 1am

Salvatore Riggio opened this counter in 1964 and his son Joe runs it now, out of a building the family still owns. Order the plain slice first. For twenty-four years that was the only slice they would sell you.

Daily, 10:30am to midnight

Hand-cut pastrami on rye from the deli that started in Kew Gardens in 1956. The sandwich arrives the size it has always been and one of them will do two people.

Daily, 9am to 9pm

Up a staircase off West 32nd into a tented Korean street bar with soju by the bottle and corn cheese to go with it. It gets loud and it stays open until five on a weekend.

Sun to Wed, 5pm to 2am. Thu, 5pm to 3am. Fri and Sat, 5pm to 5am

Franciscan friars have handed out breakfast on this sidewalk every morning since 1930, through storms and through the Depression that started it. Inside, the lower church stays quiet all day and costs nothing.

Weekdays, roughly 7am to 6pm. Weekend Mass schedule only

A proper bar counter inside Moynihan Train Hall, run by the people behind the Dead Rabbit downtown. Irish coffee made to order and a Guinness poured properly.

Tue to Sat, 10am to midnight. Sun and Mon, 10am to 11pm

A West 32nd standby that opens at nine in the morning and does not stop until one, or until six on a weekend. Order the budae jjigae and let the table share it.

Sun to Thu, 9am to 1am. Fri and Sat, 9am to 6am

Sfogliatelle and an espresso from the bakery that brought the old Prince Street name back in 2021. The Dapolito family baked under that green sign from 1920 until the storefront went dark.

Daily, 6am to 8pm

Pay-by-weight Korean steam table with a cold case of kimbap and banchan next to it. Ten dollars gets you dinner and you are back out in fifteen minutes.

Daily, roughly 7am to 11pm