Hotel Eve Jazz & Cocktail Lounge

A gate between Virtue Boutique and Dane Wells Gallery on N Lexington Avenue is the only sign of Hotel Eve from the sidewalk — the street number, 56, gets you no closer than that. Behind it, a brick courtyard leads past a red door marked with an iron keyhole and down into a basement room: black-and-white checkerboard tile, red neon spelling JAZZ over an arched, backlit shelf of bottles. Mounted on the brick beside the door, a black sign carries a gold arrow — arrowhead at one end, a crescent moon at the other — with a key at its center and Hotel Eve in cursive underneath. Above the bar hangs a large painting of a single stiletto, rendered loose and sketchy in charcoal and white. There are no rooms to book, despite the name — just the lounge, the courtyard, and whoever is playing, paid in full off the ticket price and guaranteed regardless. Black leather banquettes line the opposite wall, and overhead a triangular panel throws a wedge of amber light across the ceiling. The courtyard alone takes cocktail traffic with no cover at all, ticket or no ticket. Skip the ticket and take a table outside if a drink is all you came for.