The unassuming exterior of Cordato's.   (Photo: Mark Peterson/Redux)

• Cordato's Deli and Bar

  94 1/2 Greenwich St., 212-233-1573

  Illicit groggeries in the back rooms of grocery stores were four to an intersection back in the 1800s. This is as close as you’ll get these days. In the back of this nondescript deli, a door opens onto boxy quarters that are often standing-room-only in the early evening, when the spirit of the Pussycat Lounge seeps in from next door as girls give stool-top lap dances to ruddy-cheeked suits, do-ragged gangstas, and ground-zero workers. The melting pot occasionally boils over—last year, an off-duty cop accidentally shot a man who knocked over his beer—so if all you want is video poker and a barmaid who’ll call you “Papi,” go later in the night, when the dancers have left.

From the 2006 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine