Daniel MaurerA Southern-grub joint on East Fourth Street will finally begin pouring whiskey on Monday – an accomplishment its owner said was “no small feat.”
The Cardinal has been serving beer and wine since it opened last August – something owner Curtis Brown perceives as a handicap. When customers find out the restaurant doesn’t serve hard stuff, they often go elsewhere. “For brunch people just say, ‘Oh, you don’t have booze? Oh sorry, we really wanted a Bloody Mary,’” he said.
Now the restaurant will begin serving “a nice Bloody Mary,” in addition to specialty cocktails that will likely contain infused and small-batch liquors as well as ingredients made in-house (the onions will be hand-pickled and the Marsciano cherries will also be made on-site).
The road to a liquor license was a rocky one, due to the community board’s resolution against supporting license applications on side streets, said Mr. Brown. Read more…
Back in June, Paul Gerard, the chef who took over the short-lived Zi’Pep space on Ninth Street, told us he would open Exchange Alley with Billy Gilroy, a partner in West Village hotspot Employees Only. So what does “New York with a New Orleans flair” look like? Watch our video of yesterday’s opening night festivities to find out.
Yesterday Mr. Gerard, who was a chef in New Orleans before most recently serving as chef of Soho House, said he would be preparing a frequently changing menu using, in part, ingredients from a backyard garden that he hoped would be used by local schoolchildren. “Some days I’m enamored with pasta, other days I’m enamored with tomatoes,” he said. “By the time the tomato season is just about over, I’ll be enamored with root vegetables and game.” The bar, backed by mirror-finished stainless steel, will serve beer-and-wine cocktails till 2 a.m. on weekends.
The walls are decorated with photos of some of Mr. Gerard’s creative inspirations, including downtowners like Lou Reed and Miguel Piñero. The chef is hoping to tap into the new make-up of the neighborhood, which has changed a lot since his younger days living in Alphabet City. Read more…
Daniel MaurerA quirky “ambassador” program that failed because its cool members weren’t cool enough for the Chelsea nightclub they were representing will be implemented in a new bar on East 14th Street.
The owner of Bishops & Barons, which is celebrating its opening tonight in the old Hype Lounge space, expects that his roughly 150 ambassadors will invite their friends to the restaurant and cocktail lounge that evokes the days of “showgirls, movie star gangsters and supper clubs,” according to a press release.
“It’s all about creating a foundation for the place,” said owner Danny Kane of his ambassadors. “That way, when people walk in it’s not empty and there’s energy.” Read more…
Photos: Noah Fecks. Cocktails, in order: Friend of the Devil (two photos), Gin and Juice (three photos), Manhattan, Lady of the Night (three photos), and J. Crusteau at Booker and Dax; I Hear Banjos (two photos) at The Wayland; Beetnick, Manhattan on Draught, Bowery Fix, and Yankee Mule at Saxon + Parole; Flor de Jalisco, 1890, Bitter Mule, and Pimm’s Tonic at The Wren; and G.P. Spritz and The Last Cocktail at Prima.
Jason Mendenhall, a partner in the new cocktail bar on Avenue C, The Wayland, knows the East Village has long been a drinks destination. “I’ve heard people refer to the neighborhood as the cocktail ghetto,” he recently told The Local. Lately, mixologists like Mr. Mendenhall have been raising the proverbial bar on tired old speakeasy drinks, with twists that have nothing to do with lemon rinds: we’re talking red-hot pokers, smoke capsules, and centrifuges.
Take Mr. Mendenhall’s most popular creation, I Hear Banjos. The mixologist roasts apples to make bitters for the corn-whiskey and applejack drink (he’s also working on umami bitters, made from various mushrooms). But that isn’t the impressive part. For campfire effect, the drink is capped with an upside-down snifter full of applewood smoke. Mr. Mendenhall is planning an entire line of smoked drinks (and a line of drinks incorporating vegetables like kale and beets, as well), and he also hopes to create smoked ice.
At Booker and Dax, the recently opened bar at Momofuku Ssam, partner Dave Arnold is going one step further than using a smoking gun – he’s wielding a red-hot poker. “It has an internal temperature of 1,500 degrees Farenheit,” he said. “We shove it into the drink to create burnt-caramel flavors that you can’t get by making a hot drink on the stove.” Read more…
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
The East Village got a new Filipino spot earlier this month, and now Larry Reutens, a former executive chef at Alias on the Lower East Side, is paying homage to a neighboring island, his native Singapore. Mr. Reutens arrived in New York in 2004 with plans to continue his career in finance, but he ended up going to culinary school while awaiting a work permit and decided to stick with cooking. He scored a gig in the kitchen at Aquavit, moved on to be sous chef of the defunct Tasting Room, and now, at Masak – his first solo venture – he’ll bring Asian ingredients into the New American sphere. Read more…
