Inside: Clover Club

The original Clover Club was a pre-Prohibition Philadelphia institution where the bluest of blue bloods ate, drank and became restrainedly merry. Brooklyn's recently opened Clover Club is a Cobble Hill bar of equal parts Gatsby fantasy, cocktail museum and ingenious booze laboratory.

Walk in, find a staff member (it's easy-they're the only ones dressed appropriately), consult the history lesson of a menu, and order a drink. The making of each cocktail (200 hundred years ago, by the way, "cocktail" simply meant a mixture of liquor, bitters, sugar and water—thank you, Clover Club menu/primer) is a hypnotic little three-minute ceremony that often starts with hand-cracked ice, an army of thimble-sized silver dram cups and a tiny orchestra of pouring, stirring, swirling, splashing, drizzling and swizzling.

We recommend the sweet-tart sweetheart New York Sour (rye whiskey, bitters, egg white and soda, $10), the transportingly green Gin Gin Mule (gin, ginger, lemon, mint and soda, $10) and the sparkling and otherworldly Southside Fizz (London-style, with gin, cucumber, mint and sugar, $11). Or, if you're with your sewing circle, the foursome-friendly bowl of Clover Punch (gin, lemon, blackberry, allspice and Champagne, $42).

Digs: An airy and immaculate world of dimpled purple leather, mammoth chandeliers and gleaming carved wood, executed with painfully good taste and steeped in romanticized Victorian glamour—and all accessorized with arcane cocktail accoutrement culled from owner Julie Reiner's years of thorough antiquing. (She also runs the Flatiron Lounge, which can trend toward frat-housey on weekends, although French 75s do replace MGDs as the drink choice).

The front parlor seats 80, while the velvet-curtained back lounge, decorated with a stronger dose of the front room's smoky glamour, accommodates just 30—and all must remain seated per Reiner's law, creating a peaceful oasis when the front gets packed on weekend nights.

Vibe: A calm, 1920s-themed costume party to which, sadly or happily, no one's come in costume—again with the gently off-putting "cocktail museum" feel.

Music: Warm jazz, fuzzy and gramophone-style, sands down some of the bar's fussiest corners.

Bottom Line: Gorgeous décor, unparalleled cocktails and bar food that goes so deliciously, stratospherically far beyond bar food (Lamburger! Beet salad!). But Clover Club's also the place where we saw Simon McCord, that cuckolded, fame-clawing Australian man who's married to the worst wife of the "Real Housewives of New York City" (and who-now I'm the worst for knowing this-lives around the corner) taking long, satisfied drags on his cigarette outside the ornate front doors. His expression seemed to say, Finally, something fancy for us. A home, if you will, by the by. Gah!

Cocktails: $10-$12
Beer and wine: $6 beer, $10 wine
Savory bar food: $8-$16

Clover Club
210 Smith St between Baltic and Butler Sts,
718-855-7939

Photo by Sam Horine