New York hidden lounge.

located at
113 St. Marks Pl
(between 1st Ave & Avenue A)
New York, NY 10009

For those of you who have never heard of PDT, PDT is the cocktail-lounge annex to Crif Dogs, an East Village fast food restaurant known for its deep-fried Jersey-style hot dogs. The entrance is in the phone booth, which is only difficult to find if you go early (which I highly recommend if you don’t have a reservation).

PDT’s voicemail says that they will take day-of reservations after 2pm. We called (and called) only to keep getting a busy signal. We therefore decided to go thirty minutes after PDT opened hoping to get in. We were told by the hostess, who was rather rude, that we would have to wait one hour and she would call us when a table opened. Two hours later we received a phone call just before we had given up and made other plans for the night.

PDT is snug and quite intimate. The space can maybe hold thirty to forty people, and there is a four person limit per party. The bartenders are quite impressive and far (far!) nicer and accommodating than the hostess. (Seriously, does anyone know why she is so rude?) We enjoyed all of our drinks, especially the gin gin mule.

Towards the end of the night, we decided to order tater tots from Crif’s kitchen, which the cocktail waitress was more than happy to deliver to us at the bar. The tater tots came wrapped in foil and were covered with hot sauce and cheese — the perfect way to end a night of good conversation (ahem, drinking).

We definitely recommend PDT to anyone who loves a good speakeasy. The drinks were spot on, and I really enjoyed how they tried to keep PDT a “secret”. I wouldn’t say that PDT is much better than other bars we have tried on the World’s Best List, but PDT is an experience that we will always remember (rude hostess included).

If you are interested in seeing what other bars made the World’s 50 Best Bar List:

http://drinksint.com/news/fullstory.php/aid/2530/World_s_50_Best_Bars_2011_announced.html