SoHo / Nolita

Keith McNally opened this brasserie on Spring Street in April 1997 and it has run a French menu from breakfast through to midnight ever since. The distressed brass mirrors and the tin ceiling were built that way at the start rather than acquired with age. Bread and pastry are baked daily at the bakery on the same address.

Mon to Fri, 8am to midnight. Sat and Sun, 9am to midnight. Service runs without a break through the afternoon

Eileen Avezzano tested her family cheesecake recipe out of her apartment and moved the business onto this corner in 1975, when the police headquarters up Centre Street had emptied out and the block was not on most maps. She called it her lucky corner. Retail started because people knocked on the door, so they bought a case.

Sun to Thu, 11am to 7pm. Fri and Sat, 11am to 8pm

Christina Tosi opened the first Milk Bar in the East Village in 2008 and this Mott Street shop is one of five the company still runs in the city. The Compost Cookie and the Milk Bar Pie, which was called Crack Pie until 2019, are what people come for. You order at a case and carry it out.

Daily, noon to 11pm