Bo Peep

Bo Peep is a 60-person reception room, with seating for 30, beneath The Rag Trader in Midtown Manhattan. Its defining move is a piano-bar format built into a former garment-factory setting: live performers take the room nightly, amid velvet seating and cocktails. This is a close-range evening for people who want a table, a drink and a musician working through the set in real time, away from the conventional club-stage routine.

Cut from a garment factory

Mark Fox opened The Rag Trader and Bo Peep at the end of 2017 through Fox Lifestyle Hospitality Group; Eater reported the pair open on January 2, 2018. The building had served as a garment factory and tailor’s office, and the conversion retained architectural material from that earlier life while recasting the basement as a cocktail-and-piano lounge. Fox described the project as an attempt to honor the seamstresses and tailors who had worked in the Garment District’s manufacturing era.

Bo Peep arrived with a deliberately period-minded brief: live piano, drinks modeled around the 1940s and 1950s, and a downstairs room framed as a speakeasy-style hideaway. That origin still supplies the venue’s clearest character. The show happens at table level, with the piano providing the center of gravity for an evening shaped as much by conversation and cocktails as by the performance.

The room now

The program centers on jazz-leaning live piano, standards, contemporary favorites and guest vocalists, with Skip Brevis among the recurring performers. Music runs every evening from 7 p.m. until midnight, extending to 1 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays; a $10 live-music charge appears on each guest’s check, and reservations are recommended. Expect a lounge-first layout of red velvet, banquettes and bar seats, plus cocktail-bar food suited to a full evening at the table.