Highball Ltd.

PDT veteran Jeff Bell just opened Highball Ltd. in partnership with Marx Realty: a pretty little bar meant to evoke the golden age of luxury rail travel. Don't mistake it for a place to build plans around. It is, in essence, an office building cosplaying as a cocktail bar.

Despite the thematically appropriate address at 10 Grand Central, Highball Ltd. is not housed within the train hall but on the 11th floor of a nearby office building. The entrance is on Third Avenue between 44th and 45th, the building's service entrance. It isn't hidden: there's a red light, a plaque, a guy checking reservations on an iPad. Invoking "speakeasy" was a PR solve when the decision was made to open the place to the public. In reality, Highball Ltd. is one quadrant of The Meeting Galleries, a stylized set of connected amenity spaces for building tenants to host meetings, screenings, and holiday parties. The design is well-realized and genuinely pretty, way more interesting than any office you've ever been in. But the private workspaces, presentation room, screening room, and dry bar with no plumbing and no dedicated bartender tell the full story. The place isn't even open on weekends.

Drinks run $20 to $23 and come from the service bar at the back. The menu devotes an entire section to listing classic highballs by name: Vodka Soda, Jameson and ginger, rum and Coke. The signature highballs use infused liquors and aromatics, though both the Pep Talk and the Fresa Fizz arrived flat, which is a problem when soda is load-bearing.

Highball Ltd. feels like part of an office because it is. It won't make Midtown cool, but it might make working in that building feel like it is.

Click here for the full review.