The Nines Is the Downtown Piano Bar to Know Ahead of Fashion Week

There is no sign for The Nines. Or even a marked entrance—the street-facing vestibule doubles as a gateway to Acme Downstairs, the nightclub that’s been a mainstay of millennial nightlife since opening in 2012. Yet if you ask for The Nines, a doorman will usher you past the raucousness into a warmly lit parlor with a worn wooden floor and an antique armoire pushed up against the wall. There, a maitre d’ guides you past a velvet curtain. Duck your head, and there it is: a red-roomed supper club swathed gilded touches, Murano glass chandeliers, and a pianist playing in the middle of it all.

There are no plans for a sign because, well, there doesn’t need to be: In just two weeks, The Nines has attracted an extraordinary amount of buzz from the blue check marks—its martinis are all over the Instagram stories of those cool girls you follow—and the blue chips: it has garnered not one, but two stories in The New York Times, and its opening night got the attention of hometown tabloid Page Six. Resy reservations are few and far between (and for the next two weeks, nonexistent). Some have even taken to calling it “the downtown Bemelmans” due to its location in NoHo.

For the uninitiated, Bemelmans Bar, housed in the grand dame Carlyle Hotel on the Upper East Side, has been a bastion of the city’s culture for 75 years. Jon Neidich, chief executive of Golden Age Hospitality and proprietor of The Nines, acknowledges the inevitable—and intimidating—comparison: “The foundation of The Nines was a place to get a great martini and listen to live piano,” he said. “I think the classic reference of that in New York was to me, and for many people, Bemelmans.”