Buenas tardes, todos. I’m writing to you from San Sebastián, Spain, this week, one of the best bar cities in the world. All weekend, I wandered between standing counters selling pintxos and txakoli, a theatrically poured Basque wine. Of the thousand or so bars we tried my favorite was Antonio Taberna, which — tip from our bartender — is opening a location in SoHo this year.
None of this is too different from life back home, by the way. Everywhere I look, I see great bars backed by great restaurants. In another era, a bar from a restaurant might have been viewed as a glorified holding pen — drink here while you wait — but today bars have chefs and carefully considered menus. Here are three new-ish spots, from the minds behind Red Hook Tavern, Corima and Claud, worth checking out.
Fries with eyes and uni sours
So many chefs open bars and run them like restaurants, serving full menus that you can book ahead on reservation platforms. Not Fidel Caballero. The owner of the Michelin-starred restaurant Corima recently opened Bar Chucho in the Two Bridges neighborhood with no reservations or table service. Want an uni sour batched in a nitro keg? Hover sheepishly behind the row of seated customers at the bar with the rest of us and repeat after me: Bartender, look at me first!
All the more time to consider: michelada verde with fermented tomatillos, or the San Patricio cocktail with cold brew and Guinness? My pick is the Malaverde, a south-of-the-border appletini flavored with Granny Smiths and sotol, a grassy agave spirit. The food menu is short and sharp with a few obvious winners: the chilindrina, a fried wheat cracker shingled with raw bluefin tuna; a tangle of crusty, fried whiting (code name: “fries with eyes”); and a burger so rich with Chihuahua cheese, fermented fish sauce and bone marrow your toes may involuntarily curl. And when you have the addictive, charred peppers known as toreados, who needs pickles?
37 Market Street (Madison Street), Two Bridges, Manhattan
88 bottles of wine on the wall
Chase Sinzer and Joshua Pinsky can keep opening bars. The owners of Claud, the seafood bar Penny and now Stars in the East Village, possess the unnatural ability to outdo themselves even as they expand, expand, expand.
At Stars you’ll know you’re in for a treat as soon as you strike up a conversation with one of the bartenders, as helpful as any sommelier, and debate the modestly priced wine list, featuring 88 bottles under $88, and more options in the cellar. Many people treat Stars as a bar, ordering wine and emerging hours later with blushed, blissed-out looks on their faces. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that it’s really a restaurant, each time I flood my small parcel of bar counter with its charming snacks: blini draped with sheer sheets of ham, deviled eggs capped with spiced, star-shaped pomme soufflés and a burnt brown potato frico that crunches like a costra.
Arrive around opening, and the 12-seat bar may still be filling up with walk-ins. Ten minutes later, and even the ledges that circle the room — not much wider than window sills — become prized real estate for bottles of this (fizzy pét-nat) and that (Miller High Life). Whoever said Gen Z isn’t drinking hasn’t spent a night out here.
139 East 12th Street (Third Avenue), East Village, Manhattan
A tavern for the rest of us
The other day, I stood at the front of a small crowd on Van Brunt Street, facing south toward Red Hook Channel. Opposite us, a few yards away, was a second wall of people — much bigger and still growing — that bent around the corner and out of sight. Despite appearances, this wasn’t a sneaker drop but the two lines outside of Red Hook Tavern: one for the restaurant and another for its new, next-door bar, Tavern Next Door.
Is there a burger? There used to be two! In the beginning, Tavern Next Door served a pair of tiny cheeseburgers, exactly like the famous burger at Red Hook Tavern, only shrunk down. The sliders had a good run, but they’ve since been replaced by the regular Red Hook Tavern burger: raw onion, American cheese and a fat puck of rich, dry-aged beef on a bone-dry bun. Other reasons to come include cottage fries drowned in brisket queso from Hometown Bar-B-Que and breakfast sausage corn dogs — genius! — that taste like a continental breakfast. I didn’t try the lamb skewers, but I have to assume they’re divine: When a bartender announced they were sold out one evening, half of the bar groaned.
327 Van Brunt Street (Sullivan Street), Red Hook, Brooklyn
