Little Branch

Little Branch occupies a basement on Seventh Avenue South in the West Village, and there are evenings when it is the best bar in New York. Joe McGuirk opened it as a companion to Employees Only — same block, different sensibility. Employees Only is for staying out late with energy; Little Branch is for descending into something smaller and more serious. The room holds around 50 people. Jazz plays every night. The cocktails use hand-cut ice and are built with the same care as any other top-tier bar in the city, with less of the theatre.

The cocktail list focuses on classics and their variations. You will find the canon here — Negronis, Manhattans, Daiquiris, Sours — all made properly and priced fairly for the West Village. The spirit selection is extensive and the bartenders are experienced enough to navigate it. Little Branch sits in the same lineage as Milk and Honey, the West Village bar tradition that values restraint over showmanship. For anyone building a West Village evening, our guide to the best bars in the West Village pairs this with a dozen other options in the same neighbourhood. The Employees Only experience, just around the corner, makes for a natural double.

The jazz is the distinguishing feature. It is not background music — actual musicians perform, sets run through the evening, and on good nights the whole room quiets down around the music. This is what separates Little Branch from every other good cocktail bar in a 5-block radius. For more on the live music bar tradition in New York, see our New York live music bar guide and how Little Branch fits into the city's broader bar landscape in the full New York bar guide.