Best of the City: The 11 best things Time Out New York editors saw, ate and visited in 2025

Long a beacon for Black arts, the Studio Museum reopened this fall after a seven-year renovation project closed its doors. Now, the museum is back, bigger and bolder than ever in an 82,000-square-foot footprint that doubled the space for groundbreaking exhibitions. As one museum official put it during a reopening event “This building says to the world: Harlem matters. Black art matters. Black institutions matter.” Indeed, the building’s seven stories are packed with artwork from local and international artists, from Barkley L. Hendrick’s iconic Lawdy Mama to Louise Nevelson’s Homage to Martin Luther King to Jean-Michel Basquiat’s collage, Bayou.

Drawing inspiration from the neighborhood itself, the museum also added a welcoming hangout area called the stoop, showing that the Studio Museum isn’t just about curatorial strength, it’s about community, too. 

Typical fashion exhibits feature glittering ball gowns, tailored skirts and ornate jewelry—but not this show at The Met. This year, the museum’s Costume Institute focused its annual fashion exhibition on menswear for delightfully dapper results. The show presented sumptuous suits, perfectly tailored pants and patterned outerwear as it explored 300 years of Black style through the concept of dandyism.

It began with an important grounding in the 18th-century Atlantic world where a new culture of consumption (fueled by the slave trade, colonialism and imperialism) enabled access to clothing that indicated wealth, distinction and taste. Visitors to Superfine didn’t just get outfit inspo, they learned to raise questions about identity, representation and mobility in relation to race, class, gender, sexuality and power. 

Pitt’s has a certain kind of grandma core-aesthetic where China is as much for decor as it is for dining and the amount of rooster figurines perched on counters and behind the bars is just right. It is all courtesy of Jeremy Salamon, whose restaurant follows in the footsteps of his first, Agi’s Counter, particularly in the charm category.

But his latest Red Hook restaurant continues the tale of Salamon’s upbringing, as he serves his version of North Carolina cookery with meatloaf pâté spreads and tuna crudo marinated in wonderfully smoky and zippy tomato vinaigrettes. The pièce de résistance has to go to one of the more viral dishes of the year: the pancake soufflé, an airy, cloud-like dessert that will forever float us back to Red Hook every time. 

schmuck.’s comeback story was enough to earn them high praise, a tale that included two ousted bar talents, an international arrival from Barcelona to NYC and keys to an East Village bar that was quite literally finished by the power of the internet.

The result? A handsome lounge that ranks high on the swank factor but not in the pretentiousness category, as all are welcome to the party. Metal trays with cute paper doilies host all manner of cocktails, peanutty and chili oil-flecked savory somethings to interpretations of eggnog, made the schmuck way with an infused corn cream and jalapeno for kick and interest.

Most of last season’s best Broadway musicals actually premiered in 2024. The biggest exception was Real Women Have Curves, a joyful crowd-pleaser about a Latina dressmaking business, adapted by Lisa Loomer and Nell Benjamin from Josefina López’s play (and its subsequent film version). Though set in the 1980s, the show’s themes of immigrant struggle and body positivity were well-tailored to current ideas, and were delivered with energy, warmth and good humor.

Sadly, Real Women was the victim of Broadway overcrowding. It opened on the very final day of the season and got lost in that week’s frantic shuffle; its only Tony nominations were for Justina Machado’s masterful supporting performance and Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez’s smart, flavorful score, and it closed after just two months. This musical deserved more love for all the love it had to give: Audiences slept on what should have been a sleeper hit.

We have been spoiled for choice in 2025 where new plays are concerned. Three of them earned five-star reviews from us, including two that are still on Broadway: Samuel D. Hunter’s Little Bear Ridge Road, which examines the cosmic through a microscope, and Bess Wohl’s ensemble-driven Liberation, which views second-wave feminism through a rear-view mirror.

But the crown goes to Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Purpose, a brutally funny family drama about a prominent African American house divided, in which Black pride goeth before the fall. It was a bold addition to the classic American dinner-goes-wrong-and-skeletons-leave-the-closet tradition, and director Phylicia Rashad’s ensemble cast—Jon Michael Hill, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Harry Lennix, Glenn Davis, Alana Arenas and Kara Young—made a fabulous meal of it.

Sometimes, when it comes to art, simplicity is the art itself. A massive bronze sculpture of a young woman by Thomas J. Price popped up in Times Square this spring. In her casual clothes—jeans, a T-shirt, sneakers and braids—with a hand on her hip, she cast a cool gaze over the area.

She stood in contrast to Duffy Square’s two other statues, both of which depict men. Titled “Grounded in the Stars,” the piece was intended to confront “preconceived notions of identity and representation,” per Times Square officials. The piece, both straightforward in its design and complex in its meaning, invited all to stand and gawk. Unlike any other public artwork this year, it spurred thousands of comments online—most definitely confronting those preconceived notions.

Some immersive experiences have gotten a bit ho-hum over the years, but Genesis House truly impressed us this fall with CHROMA: Tales Between Hues. It’s a far cry from your standard project-images-onto-warehouse-walls type of “immersive” experience. Instead, the Meatpacking District venue combines a compelling story about Korean folklore with digital activations for a transfixing experience. Actress and singer Ashley Park collaborated with the team to make it possible, and her passion for the story truly shines through.

It’s free and still on view through December 14, so go see it!

New York City turned 400 this year, and it was a complicated birthday given the city’s roots in colonialism. But one celebration took the cake for us. Founded by Broadway, a free festival featuring more than 20 hit productions, took over Midtown for a day of live music this fall. Performers from shows including Aladdin, Wicked, The Book of Mormon, The Lion King, MJ, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Mamma Mia!, & Juliet belted it out in the streets for all. The concert celebrated Broadway’s triumphs showcasing how New York City’s creative community inspires people across the globe. 

It’s said “you get what you pay for.” But that wasn’t the case at Underground Overground Comedy’s 99-cent comedy show hosted with AriZona Iced Tea on a frigid winter weeknight. Unsurprisingly given Underground Overground’s reputation (plus the ticket price), the cheap seats sold out in seconds.

Comedy fans packed into The ReShop in SoHo stuffing puffer jackets under their folding chairs and settling in for a truly hilarious night. JC Mendoza warmed up the crowd with a Task Rabbit/Bad Bunny-themed joke that still makes me chuckle, before turning the mic over to Chris Turner, Usama Siddiquee, Sydnee Washington and more who kept the room laughing all night. A full bar of boozy AriZona drinks added to the epic only-in-NYC comedy experience.

Here’s the hot Jasmine tea: Last season’s big Tony Awards nail-biter was the Best Actress face-off between powerhouses Audra McDonald in Gypsy and Nicole Scherzinger in Sunset Boulevard, but many theater insiders thought there was an outside chance that 25-year-old newcomer Jasmine Amy Rogers could pull off an upset win for her outrageously charming Broadway debut in Boop! That didn’t wind up happening—and Boop!’s bubbly run popped all too soon—but the fact that it was even imaginable is a testament to Rogers’s blazing star energy.

Smartly, she followed that triumph with a performance that couldn’t have been more different, playing the awkward adolescent nerd Olive Ostrovsky in the delightful Off Broadway revival of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and gently breaking hearts nightly in the gorgeous “The I Love You Song.” That sentiment may be wasted on Olive’s neglectful parents, but for audiences, the feeling is mutual.