Empire State of Mind
A SOULFUL VISIT to New York City with Ritz Carlton
New York rarely pauses, yet high above Broadway the pace softens. The Ritz-Carlton NoMad rises as a sleek glass silhouette within a neighbourhood that balances heritage architecture with modern energy. Spacious rooms frame cinematic city views, while interiors feel tailored and composed. Designed by Rafael Viñoly Architects with interiors by the Rockwell Group, the 250-room tower cuts cleanly into the sky, its floor-to-ceiling glazing framing the city in cinematic scale. The architecture feels deliberate and contemporary, while inside, soaring ceilings, layered textures and a refined neutrality create a calm counterpoint to the streets below.
Step outside and the city unfolds at walking distance. A short stroll leads to Lysee in Flatiron, where pastries are displayed with museum-like precision beneath glass vitrines. Chef Eunji Lee’s Parisian training is evident in the meticulous craft, each dessert plated as if it were an installation. Finishing their iconic rice mousse cake, we visited SUMMIT One Vanderbilt where mirrors and sky merge into spectacle. Observation decks in New York are plentiful, yet here art, architecture and vertigo converge, encouraging you to linger above the grid below.
Uptown, the Guggenheim spirals with quiet authority. Alex Katz’s retrospective fills the rotunda with faces and figures that feel both restrained and resonant. His cool optimism offers a counterpoint to the city’s constant intensity, a reminder that New York contains multitudes of mood. Returning downtown, the hotel’s subterranean spa provides a brief interlude of marble-clad calm. Steam and an experience shower recalibrate before dinner at Atoboy in Gramercy, where Korean flavours are rendered with precision and warmth. Red shrimp glossed in kimchi beurre blanc and crisp fried chicken brined in pineapple linger long after the final course.
Night carries us west toward the Meatpacking District and Little Island, where the Hudson reflects a skyline in glittering fragments. The World Trade Center pierces the dark, taxis hum, and the wind carries that familiar, endless white noise of the city. New York compresses art, ambition, flavour and scale into a single breath. In that convergence lies its magnetism: a metropolis that never truly rests, yet somehow leaves you restored.
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