The Vault at Pfaff's (CLOSED)

Walt Whitman penned a few lines for this onetime bohemian beer cellar, including this one: "The vault at Pfaff's, where the drinkers and laughers meet to eat and drink and carouse." Today, the subterranean drinkery, which has had several incarnations since it opened in the 1850s, serves as a handsome cocktail lounge featuring a century-old white-oak bar, restored iron columns and granite ceilings. The drinks list offers refined quaffs, like the 1855, made with a vine-flower liqueur, house-made cranberry bitters and prosecco, and the St. Henry, which combines pisco, elderflower liqueur, lime juice and orange bitters. Pad the boozing with fancy bites, including salmon tartare with chipotle avocado and yucca chips, and baby rack of lamb with a mushroom-veal reduction and a pecorino-zucchini gratin.