Zen’s Den

West Village

The Elk

Tucked on a tree-lined street near the Hudson. Tiny, charming, unhurried.

CozyInvisible

Financial District

Birch Coffee

Two friends met in a 12-step program in 2005 and opened their first coffee shop in 2009 with bar mitzvah money and a belief that people should come first.

Deep FocusCozy

Upper East Side

Café Sabarsky

Nestled inside the Neue Galerie on Museum Mile, Café Sabarsky recreates a turn-of-the-century Viennese salon. Dark wood panelling, Otto Wagner banquettes, and a Bösendorfer grand piano set the scene. Come when you want the city to feel like Vienna.

InvisibleDreamy

Today’s Picks

Our Pick for Your Next Read

Four books worth carrying into the city.

Stoner

John Williams

For when you need to believe a quiet life can be profound.

William Stoner enrolls at the University of Missouri intending to return to his father's farm. He doesn't. A novel about a quiet, largely unremarkable life — and why it matters completely.

CozyInvisible

The Midnight Library

Matt Haig

For when you need to believe in second chances.

Between life and death there is a library. Its books give you the chance to try another life you could have lived. Nora Seed must ask herself: what makes a life worth living?

DreamyDeep Focus

Norwegian Wood

Haruki Murakami

For when the city feels too loud and you need to go somewhere else entirely.

Tokyo, 1987. Toru Watanabe looks back on his years as a student and his romantic entanglements with two very different women. Murakami at his most intimate and aching.

DreamyInvisible

A Room with a View

E.M. Forster

For when you want to feel alive and slightly reckless.

Lucy Honeychurch travels to Florence and finds her carefully ordered world disrupted by a man who insists on feeling everything. A novel about the courage it takes to live honestly.

CuriousOpen