Pick up the receiver in the vintage phone booth inside Crif Dogs on St. Marks, ask nicely, and the wall opens — Jim Meehan's PDT has run New York's most famous entrance since 2007, and the drinks have always been better than the trick required them to be.
Who would love it: first-timers, because the reveal still works, and returners, because the bar behind it never coasted — the PDT Cocktail Book became standard bartending literature and the menu still earns its place in the city's top tier. Who would hate it: the reservation-averse; same-day booking opens in the afternoon and evaporates in minutes.
The room is small, taxidermied and warmer than its myth suggests — a few booths, a short bar, hot-dog grease perfume drifting in from the host restaurant as a design feature.
Order the Benton's Old Fashioned — bacon-fat-washed bourbon with maple, invented here by Don Lee and now a modern classic taught on five continents — and pair it with a chili-cheese dog passed through from Crif's, the high-low pairing that defines the place.
See its place in our best cocktail bars in New York list — and in the lineage of every hidden door on our hidden gems ranking that copied the idea.
