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After lying dormant for over thirty years this Lithuanian bar was restored to its 1950s less-than-splendor by a Brazilian-born city inspector, Charles Kaim. In the kitchen, his Colombian wife Connie Ruiz, whose paintings of nudes adorn the mahogany walls, prepares empanadas and cheese steaks in addition to the usual bar-and-grill fare. If a snack is all you need, Kaim will hook you up with free Slim Jims or toasted Pop Tarts, and if he has any passion fruit (i.e. maracuja') juice behind the 100-year-old mahogany bar, he’ll mix it with cachaca for a drink that, as far as sweetness and potency go, beats the many offerings from Brooklyn Brewery on tap. Although old cameras, phonographs, apothecary bottles, an upright piano salvaged from a Bronx basement, and a wooden rotary phone booth loosen up the stiff look of the circular tables, the best place to unwind is the backyard: With its trellises, an array of cooking herbs growing in marble sinks, and the branches of a decades-old rose bush sweeping over the tables, it can rightly be called a garden. — Daniel Maurer