Upper West Side

Smoked fish sliced to order at a counter that has been on Amsterdam Avenue since 1929, under a business that started in Harlem in 1908. The dining area behind the counter kept its old wallpaper and formica tables. Order eggs and onions with lox and pay cash.

Restaurant Tue to Fri, 8:30am to 4pm. Sat and Sun, 8:30am to 5pm. Retail counter Tue to Sun, 8am to 5pm. Closed Monday

Charles Gabriel has been cooking this chicken in Harlem since the 1990s, and it is pan-fried in a cast-iron skillet rather than dropped in a fryer. The 72nd Street store opened in 2022. You order at the counter, there are no reservations, and it runs to 10pm on a weeknight.

Sunday to Thursday 11am to 10pm, Friday and Saturday 11am to 11pm

A long narrow bar under a neon harp sign on 79th Street, opened by the Caraway family in the 1920s and licensed as a pub since 1933. The front bar is where the regulars sit and there are tables at the back. Drinks are cheap by Upper West Side standards and it is open until four in the morning every night.

Daily, noon to 4am. Happy hour from noon to 7pm

A standing counter on the corner of 72nd and Broadway selling a recession special of two dogs and a drink. Nicholas Gray opened it in 1973 after leaving Papaya King, and this is the last of the shops he ran. You eat at the window shelf looking out at the street.

The shop's own site posts open 24 hours. Current third-party listings instead post 8am to 10pm Sunday to Wednesday and 8am to 11pm Thursday to Saturday, so treat very late as unconfirmed

Three floors of a 107th Street townhouse hung with the Himalayan paintings of Nicholas Roerich, who designed the sets for the premiere of The Rite of Spring. Admission is free and there is rarely anyone else inside. The museum also puts on free chamber concerts in its own parlor.

Tue to Fri, noon to 4pm. Sat and Sun, noon to 5pm. Closed Monday

A narrow slice counter that has been on the same Broadway corner since the late 1950s, run by the Mangano family. The pizza is thin and heavy on the cheese, sold across a counter with a few stools against the wall. There is no table service and no menu beyond what is in the window.

Mon and Sun, noon to 9pm. Tue to Sat, noon to 10pm

A bar about twelve feet wide on Amsterdam Avenue, with a long mahogany counter, bookshelves above the bottles and drinks named after writers. It opens in the early afternoon and runs to four in the morning seven days a week. A few booths at the back are the whole of the seating.

Mon to Thu, 2pm to 4am. Fri, 1pm to 4am. Sat and Sun, noon to 4am

A narrow two-level shop on Broadway with about fifty thousand used titles and a rare book section up a flight of stairs in the middle of the floor. Shelves run to the ceiling and there are sliding ladders to reach them. It has been at this address since 1971.

Daily, 10am to 7pm

Louis and Lillian Zabar started the business in 1934 and it has occupied this corner of Broadway and 80th since. The ground floor is smoked fish, cheese and coffee sold by weight, and the housewares mezzanine upstairs sells cookware at prices that have not caught up with the neighborhood. The cafe on the corner does a sandwich and a coffee standing up.

Store Mon to Sat, 8am to 7:30pm. Sun, 9am to 6pm. Cafe Mon to Sat, 8am to 6pm. Sun, 9am to 6pm