• A Touch of Thai at Spa at the Mandarin Oriental

  80 Columbus Circle, 212-805-8880

  Standard luxe amenities (mountain-berry tea, gourmet snacks) and pretty gimmicks (orchids in the salt-lime soaking water) aside, this pedicure ($130) is a surprisingly functional process that takes each of the normal pedicure steps and multiplies it by a factor of two. Your cuticles are thoroughly moisturized before they’re trimmed, your calluses smoothed four ways by an obsessive pedicurist, and your legs receive not one but two massages. Best of all: No one is watching the clock to turn over your seat.

From the 2007 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine