Owner Danny McDonald has created a wonderful antidote to the typical "Irish" bar overrun with shamrocks and poorly poured Guinness. Swifts is a lot of fun. Choose from a huge selection of beers on tap (20+) or if none of those fits the bill, try a specialty bottled beer, glass of wine or a cocktail.

The front room features a long bar with seating (one large sharable booth and several areas with bar stools). In the back, you'll find one huge communal table surrounded by six or so booths that will hold parties of six or seven.

The music you'll hear varies - on the weekend, it's DJ-spun popular music. Other nights, you can listen in on a traditional Irish seisun with musicians of all ages jamming on folk tunes.

The crowd also varies from night to night. It gets a bit crowded on the weekend and on those nights, the people tend to be just out of college. During the week, I like the diversity you'll find: older Northern Europeans, locals, tourists, everything. Much more fun those nights!

If Swifts is too crowded, try the sister bar, Puck Fair (Lafayette and Houston across from the Puck Building) which is a bit more spacious because it has three levels. Same great drink options, a bit more food.

Swifts offers a few food choices. Favorites include sausage rolls and a pizza that tastes great around 3 am.

To get there, take the 6 train to Astor Place. On Lafayette, walk against the traffic (it heads uptown, you want to go downtown) until you reach 4th Street. Cross the street and the bar will be on your right on 4th Street between Bowery and Lafayette.

Swift Hibernian Lounge a/k/a Swift
212 260-3600

This pub is my unqualified #1 recommendation for New York—a true must-see. The draft list, though not the largest I have seen, is clearly the best. The beauty of the draft selection is that is represents every major category of "beer" that exists and typically only the best representative from each category is chosen, i.e., Pilsner (Pilsner Urquell), Stout (Guinness), Lager (Stella Artois), and so on. The bottle selection is quite impressive as well including Chimay Blue and other hard to find gems. The backroom has a small podium where you can address the crowd if the mood strikes. I discovered this bastion of imbibery on a pub crawl (right before they were outlawed by Governor Pataki) and everybody got points for climbing the podium and telling a joke. The music is very good—it is recorded each week by a DJ just for the bar. It is, of course, strongly oriented to artists who hail from Eire such as The Waterboys, U2, the Cranberries, etc., but also includes a bit of electronic and blues. The place gets packed on weekends after 10:00 PM so be prepared.

PS - You would never expect it, but their Chicken Pot Pie is really, really good - as is most of their food menu.