The Wire
Rooms
Every room, by desk and neighborhood. Every name opens the map.
A taverna the size of a block, where the fish is sold by the pound and the room by the hour.
Murals, piano, thirty-dollar martinis. Worth it once a year.
Old-world supper club; book the early show.
The uptown outpost of Notting Hill's velvet-and-brass club, transplanted to 61st Street.
The Surrey's Milanese living room, where the room is quieter than the clientele.
A downtown bistro with uptown manners, and the hardest table above 70th Street.
An Upper East Side cocktail bar with a listening room the size of a closet.
Madison Avenue's café chair, occupied since 1986 by the same fifteen tables of regulars.
The Lowell's garden room: French technique, Moroccan spice, and the quietest money on the East Side.
La Mercerie's team inside Sotheby's Breuer building: French continental, priced like an auction.
The Mark's black-leather bar, still the best-dressed room north of 60th.
Lexington and 73rd, red-lit, singers till four, and no phones allowed.
