New York’s Next Great Cocktail Bar Is Hiding in the West Village

Jeff Bell has never been the loudest voice in the room. “I’m a quiet guy until I have something to contribute,” he says, a line that could double as the mission statement for Kees, his new bar tucked beneath Mixteca in New York’s West Village. 

After 16 years, helping to define the tone and precision of pioneering and James Beard Award-winning modern speakeasy PDT in the East Village, Kees is Bell’s distilled point of view: understated, technical, and built around the idea that you don’t need to be loud to say a lot.