Keens Steakhouse • 1885

More than 50,000 clay churchwarden pipes hang from the ceiling at Keens, a Herald Square institution since 1885 where Teddy Roosevelt, Babe Ruth, and Albert Einstein once kept their personal smoking pipes. The mutton chop—a massive, two-pound saddle cut seared to order—remains the singular reason diners crowd into the wood-paneled rooms that feel frozen in Gilded Age New York. Every table sits beneath centuries of history, and the chop alone justifies the pilgrimage.