Cocktails at The Lambs Club

After taking in the matinee performance of The Scottsboro Boys, we headed over to the swanky new — but very old looking — Lambs Club. It’s like the Art Deco lounge of your dreams. You’re living in a 1930s movie. WPA-style murals. Glass and shiny chrome. Sleek, hopeful, elegant. Yeah, and the drinks are great, too.

So we arrived just after the show at 5 p.m. or so, thinking that’s cocktail hour. Unfortunately, the bar upstairs doesn’t open until 5:30, as we were very rudely told by the man at the bottom of the stairs. Sorry, guy, but if you’ve got a sign that says “bar” pointing toward the stair, and it’s 5 p.m., how can you expect people not to go up the stairs?

So we found ourselves in the lobby of the Chatwal hotel, waiting, reading our books. (Greg’s got “JFK and The Unspeakable; I’m on Moby Dick.) Luckily, both books are great, and the lobby is stunningly beautiful.

The Lambs Club was once a hotel designed by Stanford & White, and the redesign of the hotel by the current owners is a throwback, with modernity, of course.

Look at those lamps. I know it’s wrong, but I covet.

At about 5:35, we headed upstairs.

The mural is jaw-droppingly gorgeous. I felt like I was in Mexico City.

For our first cocktails, I went with the Lambs Club. How could you not?

The menu said “Better than a Pimms Cup!”

Greg got the uvarinho, basically a caipirinha but made with grapes:

Les deux cocktails:

Hunna:

Above the bar are these pendants that are shaped like the Empire State Building:

So pretty. The bar:

Our bartender, Rick:

For Greg’s second cocktail, he had asked for an Aviation. But because they did not have creme de violette, Jane, the bar manager, suggested that Greg instead try a Sands Cocktail, so named for the hotel in Vegas and a riff on the Casino cocktail: