Yawning Cobra is on Bowery in NoHo, in the lower level of the building, and you find the entrance by looking for a dark staircase opening in the middle of the sidewalk and an interior door with a serpent-shaped handle. It's women-owned, opened by Ying Li and Claire Li, both longtime hospitality veterans, and the drinks program is led by Sota Kandaka, who worked in high-end cocktail bars in Tokyo and Beijing before moving to New York.

The cocktail menu divides into highballs, sours, dessert drinks, experimental, and spirit-forward, all leaning on an Asian aesthetic without reducing it to a single reference. Say Cheese uses Parmigiano Reggiano as a garnish. Green Grass of Home comes with an edible gold flake. When you sit down they bring you a cup of miso soup, which is a practical decision framed as hospitality: something warm and saline to line your stomach before the drinks arrive. Cocktails run $22 to $24.

Forty-two seats. A second location has since opened at East 57th Street with its own separate menu. The original NoHo room has the intimacy of the subterranean entrance and a seriousness about the drinks that the size of the space seems to have helped create rather than constrained.