Sugar Monk is on Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem, around the corner from the Apollo Theater, and it was built deliberately as a tribute to the speakeasies that made Harlem the center of American nightlife during the 1920s. Mixologist Ektoras Binikos and designer Simon Jutras opened it together with that history in mind, and the room reflects that: black-and-gold bar, velvet seating, tropical wallpaper, low lighting. You ring a buzzer to get in.

Binikos runs a micro-distillery in Brooklyn that produces the amari, bitters, and infusions used in the cocktail program. The drinks are built from fresh ingredients and premium spirits alongside those housemade botanicals, and they're good enough that the bar has appeared on the World's Best Bars lists.

Live jazz plays on Tuesdays with Max Bessesen's trio, and Monday evenings have Prohibition-era cocktails and music programming. For a bar trying to evoke the Harlem Renaissance, having the music be genuinely central to the experience rather than ambient background noise matters.