Mad Men Bars

If you loved Mad Men, that stylish HBO series, and you also enjoy a good cocktail 🍸, there's no better place to raise a glass than Manhattan.

And why not do it at one of the actual Mad Men bars? Many are real locations that are still open in Manhattan.

While most of the spots that appear in Mad Men are long gone, several of Don Draper and Roger Sterling's favorite haunts can still be visited. Here's a short list:

PJ Clarke's

The restaurant P.J. Clarke's (915 Third Avenue at 55th Street), where the pay phone still has its «Out of order» sign, is where most of the Sterling Cooper office parties go down, twist and all. It's one of the Mad Men bars that shows up most often in the series.

A former bartender there, Doug Quinn, says the place was packed with executives from Madison Avenue ad agencies back in the sixties, so the writers did their homework.

Oyster Bar

Another spot frequented by the fictional Don Draper and his fellow admen is the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Terminal.

They're used to tourists walking in to photograph the vaulted ceiling, though do mention that you're just taking a quick look at the entrance.

This is a timeless New York spot. Time stopped here, and you can still feel the air of decades past.

Gaslight Cafe

The Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village is proof that not every Mad Men scene happens in Uptown Manhattan.

Several characters wandered through bohemian New York, including Don himself, who once went to meet one of his girlfriends there and stayed for a session of beat poetry readings and folk music (the episode «Babylon»).

This place was also one of Bob Dylan's favorites, and it's connected to another series: it's where the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel does her first stand-up set.

The bad news is that the cafe hasn't existed for years, but you can still swing by and see the building, which is standing (116 MacDougal St).

Hotel Roosevelt

The lobby of the grand Hotel Roosevelt (Madison Avenue at 45th Street), a hotel so committed to the series (this is where Don stayed after Betty kicked him out) that it offered a «Mad Men in the city» package to recreate the show's atmosphere for a night.

Sadly, the Hotel Roosevelt, a New York icon, didn't survive the economic crisis brought on by the coronavirus pandemic and closed its doors in 2020 😢. It came within a hair of its 100th year in business.

Sardi's

Fortunately Sardi's, with its walls covered in caricatures of the famous, is still going strong. It's a well-known Broadway institution two blocks from Times Square.

To this day, executives still come here to talk business (234 West 44th Street).

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A few drinks or dinner in these rooms may be out of your budget, but don't let that stop you from stopping in. Make up any excuse: you're lost, you're an interior decorator, or just tell the truth, that you're a Mad Men fan.

They'll get it. Seven seasons of Mad Men didn't pass unnoticed, and the show is much loved in New York.

I'll close this piece with Roger Sterling's tart postwar wisdom:

«My generation, we drink because it's good, because it feels better than unbuttoning your collar, because we deserve it. We drink because it's what men do»

Roger Sterling