• Acqua Beauty Bar

  7 East 14th Street, 212-620-4329

  The perfect pedicure is a tricky thing. No one wants the frantic, uncaring service at the anonymous place on the corner, but you don’t need the pain of paying a fortune at a high-end spa, either. Acqua Beauty Bar strikes a nice balance: the storefront salon on 14th Street is comfy and casual, yet meticulous about the actual process of pedicuring. Indeed, Acqua’s 45-minute treatments ($40), which include cucumber or brown-sugar scrubs and enzyme masques, are so soothing, you might start thinking of them as facials for the feet.

From the 2004 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine