If you're not feeling Italian food and/or a lounge and you're in Little Italy this is great little alternative. Smokeless Joe is a small and dark gastropub, with a hidden backyard patio.
Their two specialties are beer and mussels. I'm a huge fan of both, so SJ is my idea of a good start to an evening out.
My friend and I shared a dozen Malbec oysters and the blue cheese and white wine mussels. Oysters were great. Ask for some of the house's hot sauce to come with them. Just a bit, they aren't kidding with their XXX rating. The mussels were good, and the blue cheese didn't overwhelm them.
I ordered the beer of the night, which the server described to me as ginger-y. It wasn't ginger-y, and I told him I didn't much like it, in a sweet conversational way. He gave me a blank stare. I wasn't trying to send it back, more so just trying to suss out if he would recognize perhaps he'd described it wrong and offer me another option... he obviously wasn't going to budge on that. He later admitted he hadn't tried the beer he'd described. This incident sort of annoyed me, but I did order the beer* in question blindly, so it's half my fault... there were a bazillion other options.
COMING BACK FOR: They have half-priced Oysters on Mondays!
*I seriously can't remember the name of the gosh darn beer in question. I feel like a sub-par Yelper today. Will start taking better notes. ;)