For years, chef Chris Santos has been pushing at the creative edges of quick-and-savory bar food at hip spots such as Wyanoka (adjoining Double Happiness) and Mojo. Now, at the Stanton Social, which opened in April on the Lower East Side, he has come into his own. The loungy restaurant reaches a pinnacle of bar food, serving a vast variety of shareable small plates to armies of free-spending revelers. AvroKO, the firm that designed Sapa and Public, has applied its trademark sheen to the two-story space, this time with a retro edge. The ground floor features brick walls painted white, pressed tin ceilings, awkwardly close-packed tables, and round, inviting banquettes, in a dimly but elaborately lit room. Up a narrow flight of stairs is the lounge, where couches and counters accommodate more casual snacking, and floral decorations and hand mirrors on the wall lend a boudoirish touch. Little details abound, reflecting a vision that is as expensive as it is fastidious. The prime targets of this carefully accented sleekness are large, loud groups of partiers who supplement round after round of cocktails with choices from the ever-present menu (“I’ll just leave you a copy in case you want to order more later,” servers say).

Indeed, the restaurant’s aim is unerring: Every night sees both floors packed with customers, and reservations, while not terribly hard to come by, are nevertheless recommended for diners who prefer a table to a slot at the bar. Fueled by artfully assembled pop-music mixes on the sound system and by the giddy crowds, noise levels keep the mood lively. This does not make for a peaceful evening out, however: At times, it can be near-impossible to chat comfortably, or to place an order.

With about 50 items, ranging from quite small to medium-small, Mr. Santos’s menu not only encourages but actively enforces grazing. Many dishes consist of just a few finger-friendly mouthfuls designed for utensil-less consumption, and all of them have a salty ease of eating that encourages ordering another round of snacks and drinks, and then another.

Among the restaurant’s best offerings are its updates of bar-food classics. French fries ($5 for a small bowl), for example, have a matchless crunch, and the accompanying spicy mayonnaise does them justice. Kobe beef burgers ($5 apiece), topped with cheese and tomatoes, are wildly tasty and tender. They contain only a scrap of meat, but each of the three bites it takes to finish the burger sends a gush of juice running down your wrist. The menu offers two other “slider” mini-sandwiches: one overstuffed with barbecue-flavored pulled pork ($5) that has a wan, sweet taste; the other a lobster roll ($6) that comes with pleasing Old Bay-seasoned, house-fried purple potato chips. It’s laden with mayonnaise and celery and pretty skimpy on the lobster, but what meat there is is excellently fresh.

Deep-fried potato pierogies ($7) have a crisp shell and a lush topping of juicy caramelized ribbons of onion; they hardly need the truffled creme fraiche that’s provided for dipping. Crispy empanadas ($9) are built along similar lines but stuffed with hot, savory duck meat and paired with a blood-red blood orange dipping sauce that verges on saccharine. A trio of tacos filled with fried snapper are a steal at $8 (as with many such threesomes on the menu, the server asks if you want two orders, since six tacos is an easier number to share) – the shells are crunchy, the fish succulent and drenched in mild mango salsa.

Many of the menu’s more substantial offerings are versions of familiar dishes modified for snacking. Mr. Santos reconceives French onion soup as a set of six blistering-hot wontons ($8) on toothpicks, each oozing cheese and filled with a rich mouthful of broth and onions. He forms a tomatoey paella, studded with bits of lobster and chorizo, into little crisp-fried cakes ($12) that keep the unmistakable seafood sweetness of paella. The stringy, flavorless mussel that tops each cake detracts only a little; the same scrawny mussels fare no better steamed in a delicious vanilla-saffron broth or a miso one ($10). A couple of well-seasoned veal meatballs ($9) topping bland, ricotta stuffed manicotti in tomato sauce fill the belly but don’t greatly reward the palate. Kobe beef Wellington is miles better. Topping the menu at $19, it’s four times the price of the Kobe burger for only slightly more meat, but the supertender, tasty meat, swaddled in puff pastry with juicy mushroom bits and jus, cushions the blow of the price tag nicely.

Two rectangular mini-pizzas with firm, chewy crusts are another menu highlight: one classic Neapolitan-American, smothered in sweet tomato sauce and gooey mozzarella ($9), the other dark-flavored and savory-sweet with figs, blue cheese, and bacon ($12). This sort of un complicated fare is where the food succeeds most. By contrast, a bowl of hot ravioli ($11) filled with slightly tough beef rib meat is confusingly sauced with cool and garlicky tzatziki as well as horseradish and beets – the hodgepodge of flavors could work, but doesn’t.

Finishing with dessert feels like a needless addendum to such a course-less meal, and in fact, most of the dessert list is quite skippable. An exception is the cookie platter ($10), which continues the small-bites theme of the meal with delicious renditions of black-and-white cookies, jam thumbprint cookies, and others.

For such a clever, bar like restaurant, the house cocktail selection produces little excitement. A tall tangerine-juice cocktail ($10) gets a surprise fillip from rosemary-infused vodka, but the surprise is a dissonant, slightly acrid one. A blood orange margarita ($10) tries the same trick with jalapeno-infused tequila, but the drink has no tartness and the tequila’s bite is imperceptible. Sweet drinks are stronger: The “Pulled Punch” ($10), made from two rums and three juices, has an easy, sugary kick, and a champagne julep goes down quickly as well. A dozen wines by the glass occupy familiar ground, with a crisply dry gruner veltliner ($9) and a verdicchio ($8) standing out; 100 or so bottles are surprisingly affordable, with about half under $50.

The restaurant does what it does quite well: drinkable drinks and endless tasty snacks in a handsome environment. If that environment isn’t quite comfortable, and some of the featured cocktails are subpar, the target audience, vying for seats, doesn’t care. They don’t care much about the food’s triumphs either – it’s all about the social scene.

The Stanton Social, 99 Stanton St., 212-995-0099.