This list will be continuously updated as we discover more New York culinary gems, young and old. We have ordered them by boroughs – Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Bronx.
A lot has changed in New York since the Beatnik era — except Caffe Reggio. In fact, this Greenwich Village time capsule has hardly changed a thing since opening day in 1927 when its Italian founder, Domenico Parisi, introduced America to the cappuccino. His rare espresso machine still towers in a corner next to a 16th-century painting from the school of Caravaggio, a 500-year-old Medici family bench and various antiques from his Italian homeland. When Beatnik coffee houses flourished on Macdougal Street, you could find Jack Kerouac or Allen Ginsberg here when they weren’t drinking over at the White Horse Tavern. You can picture them chain-smoking and furiously scribbling down their thoughts in one of Reggio’s dimly-lit corners, the last holdout of a lost generation. No wonder this place is a dream location for movie scouts looking for unchanged New York. You’ll see its moody interiors perfectly captured in that Coen brothers movie about a struggling folk singer in 1960s New York, Inside Llewyn Davis. While other archetypal Greenwich hangouts of the era have either closed or become tourist traps, Reggio somehow still has that authentic and magical nostalgia. If you have some writing to do, grab a seat by the window, order a cappuccino, a slice of cheesecake and wait for the inspiration to kick in. (119 Macdougal St, Greenwich Village, NY 10012; +1 212-475-9557; open Sun-Thurs 9am-3am, Fri-Sat 9am-4am; Instagram: @caffe_reggio)
