There are certain things you want in a cocktail bar.

To be able to take a date there after a successful dinner.

To be certain that the people behind the bar know their stuff.

And to have those people give you knowing glances about cocktails that come in boxes.

And all those are conveniently packaged into Bar Goto, a low-lit, moody cocktail bar and izakaya from a fella who cut his teeth at Pegu Club. It opens tonight in the Bowery.

It’s all explained pretty well photographically past the gates of these words, in the slideshow.