Please Don't Tell

Getting into PDT is half the fun: you walk into Crif Dogs, a hot-dog joint on St. Marks, squeeze into a vintage phone booth, and pick up the receiver until a hidden door clicks open. Jim Meehan opened it this way in 2007 and the trick got copied so hard that PDT basically gets blamed for every speakeasy you've been to since. But the booth is just the doorway. Under all the taxidermy you can get a Benton's Old Fashioned, made with bacon-fat-washed bourbon, one of those drinks people still talk about, and a genuinely great Crif Dogs hot dog to go with it because why not. The World's 50 Best Bars once put it at number one in the world, and the bar's taken a James Beard Award. Get the Old Fashioned, get the hot dog, tell no one.