● Le Souk Harem (Greenwich Village) - East Village pariah/magnet Le Souk adds "Harem" to the name, signals that it's not going all PC yet. Belly dancers, hookahs, general debauchery spread out over massive tri-level space. Start this thing off classy. You’ll eventually make it down to the Mars Bar level.
● Little Branch (West Village) - Apparently, "little branch" is Native American slang for "get loaded, righteously, with elegant grace and speed." Subterranean lounge known for stiff pours. Will definitely kick-start a couple of weeks to not remember.
● Superdive (East Village) - Bottle service is so 2008 -- hook us up with a keg, brah! Adult supervision not an emphasis here, therefore good launching pad for the myriad enticements of the EV.

Larry Poston officially opened the West Village resto Hotel Griffou with business partner Johnny Swet on July 1. Poston made his name in New York restaurant circles as a manager at Pastis and the Waverly Inn, and Swet gained his hospitality know-how at Balthazar and Freemans. Most recently occupying the 9th Street space was notorious speakeasy Marylou’s, but the name of the new joint is after the original, French 1870s occupants. The modern dining rooms are themed as a salon, library, and artist's studio with a French-inspired classic cuisine menu. Poston gives us an inside look at the new spot.

As someone with a roommate who tends bar at Dutch Kills, and another who works door at its West Village cousin Little Branch, I've been privileged to sample a lot of carefully concocted cocktails lately, filled with as much blood and sweat as they are with gin and orange bitters. These are precise, creative libations worth every penny of the $12 ($9 at Dutch Kills people!) you dole out. That's why, when a bartender at the Roof Club of the Gramercy Park Hotel charged me $20 for a vodka soda , I wanted to spit up the beverage all over my nice clean boat shoes.

Rachel Uchitel, the bombshell Director of VIP Services at Griffin and a BlackBook Industry Insider, gives us the skinny on the hottest door in town.

What's going on at Griffin right now?
We’re in the middle of launching our programming. This week, we started our 5:30 service. So we’re open as a cocktail lounge from 5:30 on, 7 days a week. The week before, we had a celebrity-packed opening night. Sting, Uma Thurman, Kate Hudson, Mickey Rourke, Nas, and Maxwell were there. Lots of socialites and famous models. Fashionista people, like Rachel Zoe and Yigal Azourel. Art people like Salman Rushdie were there as well. An incredible, chic, sophisticated turnout. It was a real opening of a nightclub. That launched our evening opening with bottle service.

My partner Marc Dizon is the lead designer for the new restaurant/club Griffin, which is opening in the old PM space in the Meatpacking District. A hard date for the opening isn't set yet, but somewhere around the third week of April seems feasible. The management team consists of Josh Kaiser (Pink Elephant), James Hinojos (Lesly Bernard), Rachel Uchitel (Tao Vegas), and Hector Longoria (Cain). Josh is still in the Pink Elephant mix while he puts the Griffin staff through an intense training schedule. They wouldn't confirm it, but a friend tells me that the Milk and Honey and Little Branch crew are doing the drinks. The management team are volume-club veterans, so I believe there will be speed when there is a need.

A few weeks ago I met some friends for drinks at Cole's, one of the oldest eating establishments in Los Angeles. As I ate one of their famous French dip sandwiches, which they invented, I noticed a steady stream of people going into a little red door in the back of the room and not coming out. It was like a secret portal of some kind. (Did it lead to the Island, I wondered? Sorry, I've watched too much Lost.)

Yesterday, Grub Street fretted over the opening of the much-anticipated Long Island City cocktail saloon Dutch Kills, which they -- and everybody else -- thought was supposed to be in business last month. So I went there myself to speak to part-owner Richard Boccato (the other owner is Sasha Petraske, both of Little Branch and Milk & Honey fame), to clarify the when-will-they-open cloudiness and to get a sneak peek at one of New York's buzziest (and soon to be busiest) bars.

Where do the dancing girls of publicly traded flesh palace Rick's Cabaret like to hang when they aren't putting themselves through school? Sure, you saw the stripper interviews yesterday, but wouldn't you rather get intimate with the source material? After the jump, the Rick's lovelies page throuh our "notes" regarding where the ladies kick it when they're not working the pole. Can you get a Pulitzer for blue balls?

Belvedere's master mixologist, Claire Smith, on launching the world’s first super-premium vodka and the return of the classic cocktail and speakeasy bar.

What is your favorite classic cocktail? It changes day by day, but I suppose the one thing I always turn to is the gibson, which is a Belvedere vodka martini with cocktail onions. That’s my go-to drink.

Has vodka always been your spirit of choice? Yes, it has actually. I’m a big fan of the history of vodka and the struggle that the spirit has gone through over the years, in particular how it’s gone from being a peasant’s drink to becoming the world’s number one spirit. That’s something that I’ve always been fascinated by.

Everyone's got an office. For Mario Batali, it's the kitchen; for LeBron James, the court. And for BlackBook staffers, it's an actual office. But for the girls who work at Rick's Cabaret and Steakhouse, the office is something entirely different. It's the stage-to-ceiling brass pole, or the giddy lap of an Asian salaryman. But when daily tasks include gyrating your hips to a T-Pain banger or sipping bubbly with VIPs in the champagne room, what space does that leave for a regular nightlife? Last week, after a long day at our office (be sure to check out the raw source material), we decided to visit theirs to fulfill our journalistic duty by asking them the essential question: Where do you like to go out in New York?