Mezzrow

On our list of the best live music venues in New York.

Mitch Borden and pianist Spike Wilner, the pair behind Smalls next door, opened this basement room in 2014 as a quieter answer to it — a place for solo piano and duos rather than the marathon jam sessions up the block. The back music room seats about thirty at tables around a Steinway, with exposed brick, marble floors and the subway rumbling underneath. Cover runs less at the bar than at a table, and weekend sets wrap by half past one.