Hungry Eyes

Hungry Eyes is a walk-in-only bar built like a shrine to the 1980s, and the joke never gets old because the kitchen backs it up. The same team behind one of the city's most inventive sandwich shops turned its attention to small plates and cocktails, and the roasted artichokes alone justify a stool at the bar. The room is packed with pastel posters, vintage beer taps, and furniture that looks lifted from a Memphis Group catalog — the kind of place where you're still finding new details on your third visit.

It works as a date spot precisely because it doesn't take itself seriously while taking the food seriously. Snack, drink, talk to whoever's behind the bar about what they're reading. The plates are small and confident, the cocktails built with the same care as the sandwiches down the street.

Bon Appétit named it one of the best new restaurants in the country, and Michelin gave it a Bib Gourmand. Both are correct. This is a bar that treats a bit as an actual restaurant, and the ambition holds up plate to plate.