Spa Sol
4 W. 33rd St., at Fifth Ave. 212-564-2100
For decades, the Russians have dominated the Manhattan steam scene, and there’s no question that the Russian & Turkish Baths in the East Village and the Wall Street Bath & Spa still slap you with the hottest heat. But their rooms can also be drafty and grungy. Enter the Koreans, ready to improve on an Eastern European tradition. The steam room at Koreatown’s Spa Sol wraps the assembled soft-bodies, many descending from the Empire State Building across the street, in a blanket of dense fog and sandwiches them in hot slabs of marble and jade stones, which are believed to help the body detox. Hot air is filtered through a basket of Asian herbs and ginseng root (smelling, not unpleasantly, like broccoli), while the temperature remains a perfectly unbearable 120 degrees at all times. And unlike the Russian competition, Spa Sol never runs out of towels. (Steam and sauna only, $30; body scrub, $50 to $70; massages, $90.)
Best Place for a Sweat
Our mission this year: to hunt down not just the best but the best values in the eating, shopping, drinking, and general-consuming universe of New York. It’s quite the process, this, requiring eating and shopping and drinking (all in the name of research), followed by heated but civil discussion, and heated but less-civil discussion, until a winner emerges in each category.


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