Behold The Saint, a cool, intimate lounge with a solid, polished crowd on the unlikely Fountain and Vine. You may remember it as Vine Bar (or you may not), a seedy, grimy rocker hole where musicians used to cavort. But former Vine Bar owners Johnny Maloney and Logan Fenton yearned for their hipster hangout to be so much more, and thus transformed the space into The Saint, which, according to Fenton, "feels like a New York bar. I hate L.A. bars."

The star of the show: a gorgeous beveled glass bar covered with lustrous religious candles, topped with massive chandeliers that generate the glow of a halo (the only nod to the bar’s religious name). Towards the ...