Tim Magee shares where to stay, what to see and what to eat over five days in Brooklyn, Manhattan and upstate New York …
Tick tock, tick tock, two months to go before the series finale of USA. The global comedy horror jumped the shark early doors with storylines like the candidate in the orange corner becoming a felon, then getting shot in the ear, while the embalmed lad in the grey corner short-circuited on live TV. The writers’ room has long lost the plot with a show that is familiar but unsettling, like watching David Attenborough looking for polar bears. With a rifle.
America’s second act has been too long. I’m barely coping via West Wing wish-casting, so please wake me with President Harris’ inauguration speech. If the final credits roll and the dark side wins – Fin – at least that’s the last US election we’ll have to endure. Then it’s set your clocks to January for the pilot of the new show, The Right Wing.
If that happens, I hope the first place to cede from the new Galactic Empire will be the Empire State. I have been 30 years eating my way around New York – my last trip there was mighty – and the city is electric right now. But, as the clock’s ticking, here’s a prescription for one last hurrah.
1 Hotel Brooklyn
DAY 1: DON’T ARRIVE INTO MANHATTAN
Take in the city from Brooklyn first. Stay at 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge, in a gorgeous lower corner suite, touching distance to the trees. The rooftop pool has tennis match views, up and down the East River to Lady Liberty and Brooklyn Bridge and its sisters.
Go to G&T for a nightcap. Gage & Tollner isn’t breaking news, but the recently resurrected institution has the perfect energy for first-night immersion. Scope the long hall, then perch at the bar for the magical melatonin of oysters Rockefeller and perfect cocktails.
Gage & Tollner
ILIS
DAY 2: FILL YOUR BOOTS IN BROOKLYN
Wake up to that sky. Stroll up to L’Appartement 4F for breakfast in the hand. The hotel is next door to the Time Out market and just slipper distance to the ferry port so you can hare along the river, or go to Williamsburg to gad about the shops and spot the middle-ageing hipsters – tattoos removed, piercings healed – now doing grown-up things.
Have lunch in Sailor. April Bloomfield’s low-key return to New York is a stunner, like someone happily ran aground in the dreamiest 19th-century sea-captain’s cabin. The simpler the dish reads – see egg mayonnaise or gentleman’s relish on toast – the more skill and nous there is behind it. Add a savage champagne list that won’t give you the jitters pricewise and you’re all set for a lost afternoon. Head back to the hotel for a rooftop swim, a sleepy DJ set, and snooze till your Kindle falls on your face.
Book dinner in ILIS. Mads Refslund, one of the founding fathers of Noma, has created one of the most exciting restaurants in NYC. Sure, there’s a look of Tulum in Brooklyn and there’s familiar plating and service (as in many Noma-babies) but ILIS is a completely one-off thrill and a smoky Jules Verne/Nordic crossover that could only exist in the US.
Troutbeck
DAY 3: LEAVE NEW YORK TO GO TO NEW YORK
Once you clear the concrete, the short drive upstate is lovely. Don’t know why, maybe the grandeur of Troutbeck’s Amenia setting in the Hudson Valley, or its heroic storied guests, but I expected a Roy family/Succession vibe from the hotel: overweening gilet-garbed guests serviced by lickspittle staff. There was none of that. Troutbeck couldn’t be more chilled, and the only thing showy about the estate is the nature that surrounds it. I understood why when I met the GM – the most unassuming, charming Limerick man, John Sheedy. John looks less like the professional, experienced hotelier he is and more like a gallery owner you could be sitting next to in Tom Collins’ pub. Restrained and relaxed, Troutbeck is good medicine.
I was in that neck of the woods for a tasting at the straight-to-number-one whiskey hit machine that is Tenmile Distillery. This relative newbie is run by the soundest heads, Joel LeVangia and Eliza Dyson. Eliza’s pop John owns the distillery, but the Tenmile band has the perfect frontman in Joel, who walked us through some stunners like a proud yet humble parent talking about the unexpected successes of his kids.
Later, though you understandably mightn’t want to leave Troutbeck, visit Stissing House, a restaurant opened by English chef Clare de Boer (of King and Jupiter in Manhattan) in Pine Plains up the road, for a cosy upstate date night.
Stissing House
DAY 4: TAKE MANHATTAN
If this may be your last trip, don’t mess around – check-in to the Ritz Carlton Nomad. I’ve been lucky enough to stay in many Ritz Carltons, but RC Nomad is top of that precious list. The floor-to-ceiling framing of the view in my room makes it feel like the centre of the world. To stupid levels of marble, polished comfort and service, add a hilariously generous club lounge system with food by José Andrés, and the most drama-pants rooftop bar, Nubelez.
Lunch in Ci Siamo. Hudson Yards isn’t a part of town I’d lean into but Hillary Sterling’s live-fire cooking and Danny Meyer’s everything else makes it worth the detour. It’s a challenge to make it past the breads, but you can walk off your lunch getting lost in the swish Whole Foods around the corner, or strolling back to the hotel for sunset negronis on the glass balconies, 50 floors up.
DAY 5: BACK TO BROOKLYN BECAUSE THERE ARE MANY BROOKLYNS TO SEE
The plan was to return to the brilliant Place des Fêtes, but instead I found somewhere by accident, a joy I thought was well behind me. No signage. No website. No reservations. No credit cards. Even the name begins with a No. But in Noodle Pudding I mostly thought, yes, god, yes. Staff moved like contemporary dancers, shimmying through the room balancing trays of just above average homemade lasagne and garlic bread in one hand, and surgically made icy steakhouse martinis in the other. I hardly said a word over dinner, letting the New Jersey locals’ movie-set chat wash over me. I love that Noodle Pudding is hidden in plain sight, and the only thing you’ll clock is two fingers to modernity in a bonkers restaurant that is as bolshie and timeless as the city around it. @manandasuitcase