On a recent January evening, I headed uptown for a drink at Bar Centrale to see what the iconic speakeasy was all about.Bar Centrale is behind an unmarked door in a brownstone that looks like any other brownstone. If I hadn't seen a photo of the door and been looking carefully, I would have walked right past it.
As I walked up the steps to the unmarked wooden door, I could see people drinking inside through the blinds on the windows. But if I didn't know this was a bar, I wouldn't have noticed. A hostess with short blonde hair, red lipstick, and chic wide-legged blue pants greeted me immediately. As I was a party of one, she told me she could seat me at the bar.
He talked with one patron about Elizabeth Taylor; one of her black-and-white movies was playing silently on a small screen above the bar.Bar Centrale doesn't have a full cocktail menu, but they do offer several classic cocktails, including a martini, old fashioned, Sidecar, Negroni, gimlet, and cosmopolitan. I ordered one of my favorite drinks, a Negroni.