About
A guide to the best of New York City
Where to eat, stay and explore, and who to call — borough by borough, category by category, without the guesswork.
Top in NYC publishes curated guides to the best of New York City — kosher restaurants, pizza and bagels, hotels, museums and the professionals New Yorkers rely on. We cover all 5 boroughs, citywide and borough by borough, and we publish new guides continuously.
Why we built it
New York has more restaurants, hotels and things to do than any one person could get through in a lifetime, and it changes faster than any guidebook can keep up with. The problem is never a shortage of options — it is working out which of them are actually worth your time and money.
Most "best of NYC" content is either a sponsored roundup, a decade out of date, or silent on the things that matter to a lot of visitors — like whether a restaurant is kosher and under which hechsher. We wanted something different: guides that name real places, link to their real websites, say who each one suits, and tell you the thing you'd only know if you'd been.
Who it's for
- Visitors planning a trip and trying to build a sensible itinerary
- Kosher-keeping travellers and families who need to know the hechsher, not just the menu
- People moving to New York and looking for a broker, a lawyer or an accountant
- New Yorkers who want to know what's worth their time in their own city
What's in every guide
The format is deliberately consistent, so once you've read one you know exactly where to look in the next.
- A short answer up top — the shortlist, if you only read one paragraph
- Every entry with its neighbourhood, so you can group things by area
- A line on what each place is actually good at
- On kosher guides, the certifying agency for every single entry
- A price band, so nothing is a surprise
- One practical thing worth knowing before you turn up
- The official website and a Google Maps link, because that's what you'll want next
How a guide comes together
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01
Pick the borough and the category
We work down a list of the questions people actually ask — best kosher restaurants in NYC, best pizza in Brooklyn, best hotels in Manhattan — starting with the ones asked most.
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02
Build the shortlist
Every plausible candidate goes on a long list, which then gets cut down hard. A guide of forty places helps nobody. We check every place is open and every link goes to the business itself.
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03
Write it up
What each place is good at, who it's for, and the practical detail that saves you a wasted trip — the closing time, the queue, the thing to order.
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04
Keep it current
New York restaurants open, close and change hands constantly, and kosher certifications change too. Guides get revisited, and each carries the month it was last updated.
A note on kosher certification
Every entry on our kosher guides names its certifying agency — OK, OU, Star-K, Kof-K, the Vaad of Flatbush, CHK and others — and says whether the kitchen is dairy (milchig) or meat (fleishig).
We list the certification as it stood when the guide was last updated. Certifications lapse, change and get upgraded, and standards differ between agencies, so if kashrut matters to you, check the current certificate in the window or with the agency before you eat. We are a guide, not a kashrut authority.
Common questions
What is Top in NYC?
A guide to the best of New York City, borough by borough. We publish curated lists — the best kosher restaurants in NYC, the best pizza in Brooklyn, the best hotels in Manhattan — so you can find the good stuff without wading through a dozen tabs.
Who is it for?
Visitors planning a trip, people moving to New York, and New Yorkers who want to know what's worth their time in a city they already live in. A big part of the site is for kosher-keeping travellers and families.
How often are the guides updated?
Continuously. Each list shows the month it was last updated, and we revisit them as places open, close and change hands. New York restaurants turn over fast, so always check hours before you go.
How do you handle kosher certification?
Every entry on a kosher guide names the certifying agency (OK, OU, Star-K, Kof-K and so on) as it was when we last checked. Certification can change, so if it matters to you, confirm the current certificate in the window or with the agency before you eat.
I run a business in New York. How do I get featured?
A limited number of businesses can secure a place in each of next year's guides, written up by us in the same format as every other entry. See feature your business for how it works.
Spotted something wrong?
A closed venue, a detail that's changed, a place we've somehow missed — tell us and we'll take a look.
Get in touch