Where’s the moonshine, the bathtub gin, the watered-down Canadian whisky, the methanol?

This bar, which follows squarely in the New York-inspired speakeasy theme tradition, nonetheless gets some mileage out of some archaic cocktails that you might not have tried before, like a gin drink called “The Stork,” created by a Prohibition-era club of the same name; or an 1890s “after-dinner mint” with crème de menthe. In a more modern vein, there is a “seasonal” menu that makes good and sparing use of ingredients like ginger beer and yellow chartreuse.

The brief food menu isn’t as special, but it includes some decent nibbles like a hot dog topped with relish and pickled peppers or a neat twist on the traditional Caesar salad, with asparagus instead of lettuce. The cheese plate is great and has interesting seasonal accompaniments like pear butter.

As is the norm for this genre, you have to ring a doorbell on an unmarked door to be admitted, but as at most speakeasy-wannabe joints, the artifice breaks down as soon as the doorman starts checking IDs. How clandestine is a place if you can send a text message to make reservations?

Although the debauchery might be limited to absinthe and a creepy mural of (sigh) a man making out with an infant, Knee High does a serviceable job of feeling dark and secretive—you do feel as if you’ve been hand-selected to drink here.