Indochine

Indochine opened on Lafayette Street in 1984 and became a place where Warhol and Jagger were regulars. It should have burned out with the decade. Instead, four decades on, it is still the address for a dressed-up downtown night of martinis, people-watching and French-Vietnamese comfort food.

Nobody comes for culinary revelation, and the house knows it. Order the long-standing signatures: the steamed sole wrapped in banana leaf with coconut milk sauce, the shaking beef, sticky rice with Vietnamese sausage, and the Asian kale salad to pick at. Then settle in and look around.