The Loop's Renaissance Chicago Hotel has upped its swank quotient with Bar Novo, the ritzy ground-floor counterpart to its Great Street Restaurant and Bar.

The lounge has plentiful seating, with shallow, angular couches and leather chairs grouped at either end of the long, high-ceilinged room. Red, the dominant color scheme, is made sultry by soft light, which seems to emanate from the hanging red cylindrical lamp shades and the large black metal smoke-ring chandelier. The long granite bar in the room's center - also red - is as sleek as the rest of the place, with liquor bottles meticulously lined up between red glowing columns that bracket windows looking out on State Street.

Music, down tempo electronica with the occasional requisite Jamiroquai track, is kept at a moderately low volume, and even though there are a handful of flat screens, they're stacked on the wall as unobtrusively as TVs can be.

Fairly typical upscale bar food options ($6-$16), like prime rib nachos, flatbreads and Kobe beef sliders, share the menu with a trio of desserts ($8), all of which you can see being made in the low-walled kitchen alcove that juts into the middle of the room. A pedestrian draft beer selection is augmented by a wider, more interesting bottle list that includes some microbrews. Beer, wine and liquor all come with downtown prices, so you should just go with one of their specialty cocktails, such as a cucumber pepper margarita, a gimlet made with tangerine-infused vodka and a dangerous mixture of absinthe, vodka and champagne ($11).

Follow Bar Novo on Twitter.

Centerstage Reviewer: Alexander Hough