The Bowery Hotel Lobby Bar

Sean MacPherson and Eric Goode opened the hotel at Bowery and Third Street in February 2007, dressing the ground floor in dark carved wood panels salvaged from old Philadelphia buildings, with iron fixtures overhead and a mural of the Bowery in the 1860s running around the room. Spanish iron lamps keep the light low, and oversized palms stand between the Edwardian and art deco pieces. Nothing in here reads as new construction, which it is.

The list leans Italian before it leans anything else, with Campari, Cynar and Aperol among the aperitivi at fifteen dollars and Fernet Branca, Amaro Nonino and Montenegro a dollar above them. Cocktails hold at seventeen and eighteen, where a Negroni Chinato of Principal gin, Campari and Barolo Chinato sits alongside the Su Casa, mezcal cut with ancho, guava and lime. Wine runs long, most of it poured by the glass as well as the bottle. Two of the cocktails carry no alcohol at all.

Food arrives from Gemma, the Italian trattoria on the same floor, and the room fills most nights without any music playing. Nobody is dancing.