Budget-friendly rooftop bars in Manhattan with great views, better prices
Nubeluz, the rooftop bar at the Ritz-Carlton, offers spectacular sunset views of the Hudson. Credit: Newsday/Scott Vogel
If, like me, you recently found yourself endlessly searching online for the best Manhattan New Year’s Eve party, you may well have concluded, as did I, that nothing fun was affordable, that all the best parties at the best rooftop bars were reserved for those with the biggest wallets. Why celebrate the new year on the last day of the old year, especially when prices in the actual new year are so much more reasonable?
Take Nubeluz, for example. Jose Andres’ Midtown cocktail lounge on the 50th floor of the Ritz-Carlton is one of the city’s finest and most dramatic, its floor-to-ceiling windows offering definitive sunset views of the Hudson River and glittering skyline backdrops after dark. Witnessing either spectacle on New Year’s Eve would have set you back $450, a steep price that did not even guarantee you a seat. But Nubeluz is open at 3 or 4 p.m. every other day, when a perch at the glowing and gorgeous onyx bar may be had for around $25, the price for such terrific libations as the Bodega Swizzle (dark rum, banana, passion fruit). Snacks are equally tasty and creative, especially Andres’ grilled cheese finger sandwiches with truffle butter ($22) and potato chips with salmon roe-sparked labneh ($21).
St. Cloud Rooftop, at the Knickerbocker Hotel, has floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Manhattan. Credit: Newsday/Scott Vogel
Who could resist ringing in the new year just "150 feet under the famed Times Square ball-drop" at St. Cloud Rooftop, on the 17th floor of Midtown’s Knickerbocker Hotel? Anyone without the $2,250 it costs to secure a place at the bar that night, that’s who. But the entire lounge — its vast, twinkly-lit interior and outdoor Martini Rooftop Garden — is open to all on any other day starting at 4 p.m., a great time to canoodle on couches with friends and co-workers as you sip a refreshing watermelon-based Tequila Mockingbird ($26) and pass the short rib cheeseburger sliders ($29).
A cocktail at the Ophelia Lounge atop the Beekman Tower on Manhattan's East Side. Credit: Newsday/Scott Vogel
Elsie Rooftop, just a stone’s throw from Times Square hubbub and located 25 floors above Bryant Park, charged a comparatively modest $159 for admission on New Year’s Eve. Even more modestly priced, though, are its daily flatbreads with pepperoni, ricotta and mozzarella ($18), while cocktails start at $23. Either will afford you the same jaw-dropping views as Dec. 31 revelers.
And while for $90 you could have celebrated the big night at one of the city’s most beautiful bars, the Art Deco-inspired Ophelia Lounge, that price only gained you access until 8 p.m. on New Year's Eve. (It cost $329 to stay until midnight). That's a pity, because the 26th-floor hot spot is beautiful every night of the week (and at brunch time on Sundays), its plush red-velvet seating and checkerboard floors a considered salute to days gone by, not unlike its cocktails (the $21 Purple Tuxedo with gin and absinthe) and menu (spinach and artichoke dip, $17), all of it supported by timeless views in all directions.
The same is true of the aptly named Panorama Room on the 18th floor of the Graduate by Hilton hotel on Roosevelt Island, where from Wednesday to Sunday you can survey Manhattan from afar, living the highlife not on New Year’s Eve — when tickets started at $268 — but on any other day, tipping your hand with drinks like the mango and mezcal BMW M1 ($21), snacks like caviar nachos ($28) and million-dollar 360-degree indoor views (or outdoors from a large wraparound terrace) of every borough save Staten Island.
There’s no way to duplicate the excitement and mayhem of spending New Year’s Eve in the city, of course, but if your resolution was to spend less money in 2025, well, you’re welcome.
Newsday writer and restaurant critic Scott Vogel aims for a refreshing, gimlet-eyed take on the Long Island food scene, often while drinking a refreshing gimlet.
