Swing Into the New Year at Chicago's Hotel Palomar

If there's any time of year that can bring on a yearning for nostalgia, it's this one. But not everyone wants to take a step back into their own past at the holidays -- sometimes it's just more fun to go back even further, like into another era.

So how do the 1940s grab you? In Chicago, Sable Kitchen & Bar at the Hotel Palomar is hosting Zoot! New
Years Eve 2011. It's an homage to the era of Swing...and not, of course, to all the other horrendous things that happened worldwide in the 1940s...but this is no time for glum thoughts, just dig out your best vintage to rock out to a nine-piece swing band "The Pin Ups", bottomless champagne bar all night long, unlimited small plates from 8 to 11 pm (if they're serving their truffled deviled eggs you'll definitely want to forget all about your waistline), unlimited dessert from 11 pm to 1 am, and all the other usual trimmings of the New Year's Eve gala. Cost: $125 per person, including tax and gratuity.

It'd totally break the spell to drive anywhere in your modern wheels, and so if you and your main queen (or king) crash at the hotel that night, you get two tickets to the party and the room for $419. Just don't get startled out of your nostalgic reverie by the instant-dryer in the hotel's jacuzzi tubs -- they do click on without much warning.

Better still is to go elite, and reserve the VIP Sable Swing Lounge for the 'NYE Anti-Prix Fixe' Dinner. You and your closest nine friends get to create your own dinner menu in a private dining room. The tab: $250 per person.