Bon Courage is in the basement of 1803, a restaurant on Reade Street in Tribeca, and it runs as a separate bar with its own identity rather than an overflow space for the dining room. The name and the spirit of the room draw from New Orleans: Creole-influenced food, live jazz on Wednesday through Friday starting at five in the afternoon, and cocktails that match that cultural mood.

The room is intimate and dim with the kind of settled energy that comes from a bar that knows what it wants to be. Special events come through for Mardi Gras, Halloween, and New Year's Eve, which gives the calendar some peaks without making the regular nights feel like they're building to something.

Tribeca is not short on nice restaurants. A basement bar with live jazz and Creole food that functions as its own destination is less common.