I went out last night. I drank spritzes and tried to ride a mechanical bull and ate birria tacos with my friends on the sidewalk at midnight. I’m looking forward to going to bed very early tonight. But if something came up, I’d consider going. Especially if said something was somewhere I could order food to heal my hangover while I decide whether I want to order a Diet Coke or give myself another hangover tomorrow.
Of course, I still want these hypothetical plans to be exciting. I’d like to eavesdrop on a ridiculous conversation — last night I overheard “objectively, he's ugly, but contextually, he’s really hot” — or talk to a stranger or run into someone I know. I happened to find a place like this, a few of them actually, but for another reason: this week’s question:
So I, a hungover person, I am giving you, someone who wants “to ~mingle~ without going OUT”, something that’s useful to both of us: a list of bars with good food and restaurants with fun bars.
This question was asked in the Perfect City chat, where a thread now lives specifically for asking questions about where to eat in ___ situation. Ask yours here:
Bars with good food
I’ve found the right balance between just mingling and going out at the Greenpoint location of Ray’s. Arrive around 6:45pm on a Friday or Saturday, slip into bar seats with your friends while it’s still quiet, and linger for a few hours over bar food and drinks while the place fills up around you. There’s a thick-cut, fried bologna sandwich on a warm, plush bun, dressed up Cubano-style with Swiss, mustard and a lot of pickles. The onion rings are also wonderful — ultra crispy and very difficult to stop dipping into the smoky, spicy sauce they arrive in their basket with. The dessert menu is worth looking at. The sweet, fluffy beignets would be a fabulous ending to your meal if you wanted to keep the night PG and only talk to the people ordering drinks around you, though the pineapple and vanilla swirled soft serve, handed over with a full shot of rum to float on top is also an option, one that would set you up for a more PG-13 night of mingling with the rest of the crowd.
To me, The Commodore is the bar with good food, the original place where it was possible to order (very good) food when you were drunk without having to leave the bar. I still think it’s fun to pile into a booth with my friends and order a mountain of nachos dressed with many salsas and queso and beans or the plate of crispy fried chicken and buttery biscuits, or if the group is big enough and we’ve been drinking enough, both.
If that all sounds too casual or played out, across the street from the original Williamsburg location (there’s now a Commodore in Alphabet City, too) is Bar Madonna. It’s less bumping, especially on weeknights, but is a sleeker and sexier option where you can order cocktails instead of tequila sodas. The food menu is built of fancy takes on traditional bar food — Calabrian chili hot wings served with “buttermilk vinaigrette” (so… ranch) and a smashed meatball parm sandwich in lieu of a classic burger.
Down Metropolitan and around on Bedford Ave are Sauced, With Others, and Layla, a trio of wine bars, all useful in slightly different situations. Sauced has an adorable backyard where you can drink cool wine from tiny glasses and order snacks off a menu from whoever their latest chef on rotation is. With Others also serves fun and funky wine in a dark, sexy space, but with a more permanent, classic wine bar food menu full of things like toasts topped with fish and crunchy chicory salads. Layla has even more dinner options, and every time I’ve eaten there, it’s been better than it had to be. There’s a burger and a skirt steak skewer, two pastas, a fennel salad and an entire section of antipasti. This is also only one of these three spots where you can order an actual cocktail before or instead of a glass of wine.
Bandits is a tiny bar on the corner of Bedford in the West Village that’s always crowded, but in a fun and buzzy way. There are a few booths that cycle out pretty regularly, and you should find your way into one to order from their fun menu of chicken tenders and mozzarella sticks and spicy wings that come with two different, both very delicious ranch-like sauces for dipping.
Speaking of mozzarella sticks, I’ve never had a bad time with a well drink and a plate of them at Old Town Bar in Flatiron. It’s the busiest and most interesting around 7pm, when it fills up with well-dressed guys drinking beer after work and groups of girls getting drunk and talking shit about their startup jobs. Don’t plan your night around this place, but if you find yourself in the neighborhood, just know it’s there for you.
You might find one group who came straight from work, but you’re much more likely to see babies strapped to their martini-drinking moms, dates sitting in the window and groups of friends splitting burgers before crossing the street to sing karaoke at Montero at Long Island Bar. If those tables ordered correctly, they would also have a bowl of fried cheese curds, trout dip and the always-changing salad on them. Depending on the season, there might be a frozen drink on the menu, which you should definitely order. I think the next one we’re getting is frozen eggnog (there have been grasshoppers, cosmos and piña coladas, too), but we’ll have to call in Cobble Hill and cocktail expert
to confirm whether or not to expect a frozen fall drink before then.
The Lions the newish East Village bar where everyone is ordering linguine with clams. That’s not really something I ever see myself doing, but across the street and from the same owners is Goodnight Sonny, which my friend tells me makes a perfect gimlet, serves great oysters and plays “music that feels like a playlist off my phone” (I can confirm she has very good taste in music). She also told me they have an exceptional bread pudding on the menu, which is an untraditional bar food I’m much more interested in exploring than seafood pasta.
Restaurants with fun bars
Casetta could really fall into either of these categories, but for these purposes, and since they just started serving a larger, more serious dinner menu, let’s call it a restaurant. While it’s still warm enough to do so, sit at a sidewalk table with a spritz, eat some vaguely Parisian food with your friends and see who you run into walking down Hester Street.
Casino down the street is undoubtedly a restaurant, but their bar is sexy and you can order one of their pretty good pastas to it. If you wanted to, it’d be easy to grab another glass of wine across the street at Parcelle or Le Dive afterwards.
A few weeks ago, I drank perfect martinis and big glasses of wine at Tusk Bar’s large, marble bar inside the Evelyn Hotel. It shares a truly palatial space with Brass, though the latter is in a room with a grand piano centerpiece and has a “golden amish chicken roulade” stuffed with black truffle mousseline on its menu. You can eat at Tusk Bar, too, but you can also just hang out at the gorgeous bar — it’s the closest I’ve ever felt to feeling like them.
I also had a nice time at Elvis recently. I went early in the evening, but people were already starting to linger over drinks and snacks. There are two great loveseats in the big window up front — one inside the restaurant and one outside. Try to get one of those. The wine was great, the food was solid — we ate a lettuce-less niçoise salad — and the negroni made with coffee was intriguing.
The bar at Balthazar can be pretty chatty. I don’t know if people actually dance after dinner but I’m tempted to book a 10pm reservation and find out.
Dinner at Jean’s, though, is probably the best way to have a night out without actually going out. You can sit in a pretty, scene-y, crowded room where you might see someone famous eating fun, silly food like mini lobster rolls with shots of lobster bisque or, if you’re lucky, the now elusive big chocolate chip cookie. People also really like the chicken here. And if you decide at the end of the night that maybe you actually do really want go out, the club is conveniently right downstairs.
NEXT WEEK
Next week’s letter is something that will be incredibly valuable to my fellow creamer-addicted coffee drinkers — a ranking of the best fall-flavored lattes in NYC this year. There might even be a map! Talk to you next week 🗺️