Little Branch opened in 2005 at 20 7th Avenue South in Greenwich Village. It was started by Sasha Petraske, who had already changed the direction of New York cocktail culture with Milk & Honey six years earlier. Little Branch went further underground, literally. There's an unmarked door, a steep descent into a basement, and once you're down there, almost no light. Three small bulbs over the bar and a candle at each table.

The menu is classic cocktails executed without shortcuts. Cash only. No standing. The capacity is small enough that it stays genuinely quiet, which in the West Village is rarer than it sounds.

Live jazz plays most nights starting around ten. An upright piano takes up a corner of the room. Petraske died in 2015 and the bar has continued under different ownership, but the spirit of it remains intact. People who care about cocktails reference Little Branch the way they reference a handful of other bars in the city, as a place that shaped what they think a bar should be.