DAY ONE

Start your morning at the Empire State Building as it opens – mornings are quieter, and the 86th-floor open-air platform gives one of the clearest reads of Manhattan’s grid before the crowds build and the haze begins lifting from the harbour. Completed in 1931, the building feels inseparable from New York itself, and the view north towards Central Park and south towards Lower Manhattan is the one most people carry home.

Time for lunch at Eleven Madison Park – three Michelin stars in a grand Art Deco room overlooking Madison Square Park, with a tasting menu that reintroduced proteins without abandoning its celebrated vegetable-led cooking in 2025. As one of the city’s most ambitious dining rooms, reservations need booking well in advance. Or Katz’s Delicatessen on the Lower East Side, open since 1888, which couldn’t be more different: hand-carved pastrami on rye, communal tables and a counter service system unchanged for decades, though the recently reopened private dining room upstairs – hidden for decades – adds another layer to one of the city’s most established institutions.

This afternoon takes you to Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, moving between reservoir paths, shaded woodland trails and the density of one of the world’s largest museum collections. Few visitors are prepared for the sheer scale of the Met, so a private curator-led tour is the most practical way to navigate it without spending the afternoon in sections that don’t particularly interest you.

As evening falls, soak up Times Square’s electric energy before a Broadway show. The area is overwhelming, crowded and impossible to ignore, but that intensity is all part of the experience: theatre crowds spilling onto the sidewalks beneath neon advertising and giant LED screens as performances begin across Midtown simultaneously.

Dinner awaits at The Modern, which pairs two Michelin-starred contemporary American cooking with views into MoMA’s sculpture garden and one of the city’s strongest wine programmes. Joe’s Pizza on Carmine Street, meanwhile, is one of the most reliable arguments that the quintessential New York slice is best appreciated standing up with a paper plate folded in half.

DAY TWO

Begin your morning exploring The High Line – before the weekend crowds arrive – the route runs south to north through Chelsea and the Meatpacking District, ending at Hudson Yards. Chelsea Market, just below the southern end, makes a natural first stop: the former Nabisco factory building has retained its original industrial bones, and the food vendors inside range from decent to incredibly good.

Lunchtime beckons right at the market, which works particularly well if no-one can decide what they want – with tacos, lobster rolls, noodles, bakeries and espresso bars all operating under the same roof. Alternatively, after a five-year absence, Pastis on Gansevoort Street has picked up right where it left off, and offers an entirely different pace: crowded tables, mirrored walls and French bistro classics that have anchored the neighbourhood through multiple reinventions of downtown Manhattan.

Your afternoon takes you across the Brooklyn Bridge once the harsher midday light starts to soften. The walk into Brooklyn delivers one of the city’s most recognisable views, with Lower Manhattan rising gradually behind the suspension cables and stone towers. DUMBO and Brooklyn Bridge Park make an easy continuation afterwards, particularly around sunset when the waterfront begins filling with runners, tourists and office workers leaving Manhattan for the evening.

For dinner, stay in Brooklyn. Peter Luger is one of New York’s most famous steakhouses – old-school waiters, a cash-only policy unchanged since 1887 and porterhouse steaks served with almost no interest in today’s restaurant trends. Grimaldi’s beneath the bridge continues drawing long queues for coal-fired pizza, and the surrounding streets of DUMBO now contain enough bars and restaurants to comfortably stretch the evening long after dinner.

DAY THREE

Your final morning puts you on the first ferry out towards the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island before the queues start to build. Ellis Island is the more affecting of the two sites for many visitors, documenting the experiences of the more than 12 million immigrants processed here between 1892 and 1954 through archived photographs, recorded testimonies and preserved arrival halls overlooking the harbour.

A special lunch around Brookfield Place or the Financial District is a good shout before spending the afternoon downtown. Hudson Eats inside Brookfield Place overlooks the Hudson River and the New Jersey skyline, while Manhatta, 60 floors above Lower Manhattan, pairs modern-day American cooking with some of the city’s best downtown views.

Afternoon adventures include One World Observatory which gives you the clearest read on the city’s full geography than almost anything else – Manhattan’s dense street grid gradually giving way to bridges, waterways and the wider spread of the five boroughs. Back at street level, the area around Wall Street and Stone Street preserves traces of colonial New York beneath the Financial District surrounding it: Stone Street’s narrow lane, lined with restaurants and bars spilling out onto the cobblestones, feels like a different neighbourhood entirely from the trading floors just a short walk away.

Early evening is prime time for the rooftop bars of SoHo and Tribeca, where warehouse rooftops and older cast-iron buildings create a much more local vibe than Midtown’s larger rooftop venues.

For your farewell dinner, Atomix – currently ranked No. 7 in North America and holding two Michelin stars – operates from a 14-seat basement counter in a Murray Hill brownstone, with a 12-course Korean tasting menu that’s made it one of the hardest reservations in the city (reservations release on the first of each month). Russ & Daughters Café on the Lower East Side is a far more relaxed alternative: their bagels with house-cured lox, latkes and matzo ball soup have been enticing people since 1914. It’s much easier to get into, and no less satisfying as a final New York meal.