A Phone Booth That Was Always the Plan
Please Don't Tell — usually shortened to PDT — opened in March 2007 in the back room of the Crif Dogs hot dog shop at 113 St. Mark's Place. The bar's founder, Jim Meehan, had worked at Pegu Club and Gramercy Tavern and wanted to open a small, drinks-first room with no signage and no street presence. The Crif Dogs lease included a back area that had been used as storage. Meehan and Crif's owner, Brian Shebairo, agreed to share the space.
The phone booth was Meehan's idea. He bought a 1930s German wooden booth from an antique dealer in Pennsylvania for $2,500, installed it in the back wall of Crif Dogs, and wired the phone to ring at the bar's hostess stand. The first month nobody used it because nobody knew it was there. The bar relied on word-of-mouth and the New York Times for the next 18 months.
The 22 Seats and the Reservation Lottery
PDT has 22 seats — 12 at the bar, 10 in two leather booths along the side wall. The bar takes reservations through the Resy app exactly seven days in advance, opening at 3 p.m. each afternoon for the same time slot the following week. Same-day reservations occasionally open up if cancellations happen, but the standard route is the seven-day-out lottery.
Walk-ins are technically possible but rarely rewarded. The hostess who picks up the phone will tell you the wait — usually 90 minutes on weeknights, three hours on weekends. The bar will text you when a seat opens. Most walk-ins drift across St. Mark's Place to one of the neighborhood's other drinks rooms during the wait.
The Drinks That Made the Reputation
Meehan's original menu in 2007 was 10 cocktails, half of them riffs on classics and half original. Eighteen years later the menu structure is still the same: about 12 drinks at any given time, half originals and half from the bar's own historical archive. The most enduring is the Benton's Old Fashioned — bourbon fat-washed with bacon fat from Allan Benton's smokehouse in Tennessee, then strained back into the bottle and aged briefly. It debuted in 2007 and has been on the menu in some form every year since.
The current menu lists about $20 per drink. Cocktails from the bar's archive — which Meehan documented in his 2011 book The PDT Cocktail Book — are available on request even if they're not on the current list. Bartenders here have memorized about 200 recipes between them, which is more than most rooms in the country.
The Hot Dog Pass-Through
The other PDT signature is the food. The bar doesn't have a kitchen — instead, food orders are passed through a small hatch in the wall to Crif Dogs and returned through the same hatch with a paper-lined basket. The menu is Crif's full hot dog list, plus a few PDT-specific items including the Wylie Dog (a hot dog with American cheese, pickled jalapeños, and crushed potato chips) named for chef Wylie Dufresne.
A hot dog at PDT costs the same as a hot dog at Crif Dogs ($5.50 to $9), which is the only thing in the bar that hasn't increased its price since 2007. The pass-through hatch is one of the small theatrical touches that make the bar's structure clear — you are inside Crif Dogs, sealed off in a 22-seat room, but the kitchens are connected.
The 22-Seat Architecture
The room is small enough that bartenders can talk across it. The seating is organized so that the leather booths face the bar — meaning everybody is sort of facing everybody else, which makes the bar's hum surprisingly quiet. Conversations stay at a normal speaking volume. The lighting is amber from a single row of small fixtures behind the bar. There is no music loud enough to talk over.
This room design was deliberate. Meehan modeled the layout on the small London cocktail rooms he had worked in — Milk & Honey London, the Connaught — where intimacy and quiet were the priorities. The result is a bar that feels older than its 18 years.
What Happens After Midnight
PDT stays open until 2 a.m. on weeknights, 3 a.m. on weekends. The crowd at 11 p.m. is reservations: pairs and small groups who've planned a week ahead. By midnight the room shifts to bar-industry workers from other East Village rooms who come in after their shifts. The 1 a.m. crowd is the bar's most loyal — regulars who know the bartenders by name and order the off-menu drinks from memory.
The hot dog pass-through stays open as long as Crif Dogs does, which is technically 24 hours but in practice slows after 2 a.m. The last call at PDT is announced quietly, by the hostess walking the room, at 30 minutes before closing. The room empties without ever feeling rushed.
Practical notes
- Address: 113 St. Mark's Place, East Village (entrance through Crif Dogs)
- Getting there: L to First Avenue; 6 to Astor Place; F to Second Avenue
- Go for: The Benton's Old Fashioned, the Wylie Dog through the pass-through, the 12-seat bar
- Size / timing: 22 seats, 90-minute reservations. Open 6 p.m.–2 a.m. (weeknights), 6 p.m.–3 a.m. (weekends). Reservations seven days in advance via Resy at 3 p.m.
- Photograph it, but know this: Staff allow phone shots of the room but will ask you to put away anything bigger than a phone. The phone booth itself is the most photographed object — best shot when nobody's using it, between rounds at the door.
PDT is in its second decade because the original choices — small room, drinks-first, no signage, an entrance through a hot dog shop — turned out to be the choices that aged well. The bar has been imitated everywhere and never quite duplicated, partly because the phone booth was bought before phone booths were ironic. Walk in for the gimmick. Stay for the Benton's Old Fashioned.
#pdtnyc #pleasedonttell #speakeasy #craftcocktails #crifdogs #stmarksplace #eastvillagenyc #manhattanbars #afterdark #worldsbestbars #reservationsonly #nightlifenyc #bestcocktails #nycculture #hiddenrooms
Sources consulted: PDT NYC · The New York Times · Punch Drink · World's 50 Best Bars · Eater NY
All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Drink responsibly. Must be of legal drinking age.
