Vinegar Hill House.(Restaurant review)(Brief article)

Vinegar Hill House would merit a place in the American Museum of Natural History if it had a Hall of Cool New Yorkers Under Forty: with a faded flag, needlepoint, and potted cacti, it's a mint example of the pre-industrial, handmade sensibility that has become prevalent in a certain kind of restaurant, circa 2009. The diorama includes salvaged organ pipes, and, in the bathroom, peonies in a jam jar and patina on the faucet. The restaurant is situated in the middle of a semi-deserted cobblestoned block in Vinegar Hill, down which one can picture scamps in suspenders rolling wooden hoops. There is neither a sign nor a vestibule, and a person stumbling in early, before sepia-toned bonhomie sets in, can get the feeling of having missed a secret password. Unless you order a bottle, expect the wine to come in tumblers; if only some cultural anthropologist could explain when, and why, wineglasses became so retro-passe. Recently, certain spirits seem to have been banished to the future. "Vodka doesn't really lend itself to cocktailing," a bartender explained.

The vintage act can get to be a bit much, but Vinegar Hill's prices--nine dollars for an ...