Dram

Tom Chadwick, the highbrow-dive bar vet who crafted the cocktail menu at Rye, has built a home for the fussy imbiber. Guest bartenders, pulled from Chadwick’s Rolodex, are Dram’s selling point: They’re the kids you’d imagine were mixing 1930s-style Zombies from their parent’s liquor cabinets while their friends were trying to hook up at the mall. The ever-mutating menu is a list of bulls-eyes, but it’s more fun to surrender control to Dram’s recommendation system. Give the ‘tenders your favored spirit–or to really test them, a mood like “horny” or “quizzical”–and they’ll yank out an obscure drink from the mists of time that usually hits the spot. Such educational drinking seems irresistible to south Williamsburg hipsterati, who lounge around on couches lining the wood-sheathed interior or perch at the bar under what looks like an animal-skin kayak glowing from some inner life force. A chef occasionally cooks small bites at the bar’s shoebox kitchen, and the relocated Pies ‘n’ Thighs is a short walk away.