Exchange Alley New Orleans-ized eats and nice glasses of sherry in the East Village

What happens when you combine punk music, New Orleans, and pirates who cook really well? Aside from some movie Johnny Depp is surely braiding his beard for at this very moment, they'll also get you fed and full of drink at Exchange Alley, an old-timey men's club of a joint whose dining room gets a fireplace and candelabras, whose walls get a giant painting of a butterfly knife, and whose guests get to make selections from an impressive LP collection put together by the owner, who brings experience from NOLA, NY, and his "pirate travels" cooking in Puerto Rico, Panama, and Europe.

All herbs are grown in a garden out back, so naturally, the chef likens the food to punk rock by calling it "3-chord cuisine" ("simple and frank like a Ramones song"), which comes through in 'Nawlins-inspired joints like a confited boneless chicken wing w/ celery salt, jambalaya balls w/ "dirty gravy", meatball parm flatbread, and sweet sausage & vodka cream w/ strozzapreti noodles (full confession: they're also named "priest stranglers").

The small bar up front will be keeping things similarly simple with drinks ranging from "sherry in a nice glass", to $9 cocktails like the Exchange Boiler w/ beer, sweet potato shochu & maple, to a suds program they're planning to score advice on from next-door Good Beer, which Johnny Depp clearly had plenty of before agreeing to do The Rum Diary.