Noah Fecks

Last week The Times introduced us to an East Village couple that found hipness upstate. On the flip side of that coin is Shane Covey, a man from New Hartford, N.Y., who, last week, opened Upstate in the East Village. The restaurant’s woodwork, including 150-year-old hemlock, is from a barn in Mr. Covey’s hometown, and breweries represented on the draft beer list include Ithaca Beer Company and Keegan Ales of Kingston.

Despite the out-of-town allegiance, Mr. Covey’s first instinct was to call the restaurant Local, and offer a menu of exclusively local, sustainable food. “I was thinking, man, it’s going to be tough to do that 100 percent,” he said. “I do it probably 85 percent if not more, but you’re going to get someone who comes and asks, ‘Where did the tomato come from?’ and I’m going to be like, “I don’t know— I got it at the bodega next door!” (Mr. Covey also gets his wines from down the block, at Tinto Fino.) Read more…

Lauren Carol Smith

Good morning, East Village.

The Associated Press tells us that Gavin DeGraw, who was attacked by at least two men in the East Village on Monday night, has been released after a night’s stay at Bellevue Hospital. A police source tells the Post that the singer was too drunk to remember the attack clearly, but his brother Joseph insists he was drinking nothing but cranberry juice.

If that incident isn’t keeping you away from the nightlife, the folks at DNA Info remind us that the first-ever AlphaBet City Dolly Film Festival starts tomorrow. Thirty independent films will be screened at bars and restaurants between Avenues A and C, from First Street to 14th Street.

Two new Bowery restaurants are coming along: Yesterday EV Grieve noticed that Veselka Bowery was readying its tables, and now Bowery Boogie notes that the Bowery Diner, from the owners of Peels, has put up some signage. Read more…

Michelle Rick

Good morning, East Village.

The Post reports that singer Gavin DeGraw was attacked by a group of men on First Avenue between Fifth and Sixth Streets around 4 a.m. Monday. He was scheduled for a concert in Saratoga Springs today, but instead Mr. DeGraw, who owns The National Underground with his brother Joey, is under observation at Bellevue Hospital.

The “outlook is dim” for the last of the lighting businesses along the Bowery. “Store owners point to gentrification, the downturn in the local housing market and the rise of online shopping as having taken a toll on their businesses,” writes The Wall Street Journal.

More change on the Bowery: The folks at Bowery Boogie and The Lo-Down recap last night’s CB3/SLA meeting. According to The Lo-Down, a “slightly more affordable” version of midtown steakhouse Quality Meats has been green-lighted for liquor at 199 Bowery. Bowery Boogie reports that the owners of Peels at 325 Bowery were given the nod for some alterations.

Correction: August 12, 2011

An earlier version of this blog post misstated the name of a neighborhood blog. It is The Lo-Down, not The Lo-Side.

Meghan Keneally The new restaurant will be at 78-84 Rivington Street, located on the corner of Rivington and Allen Streets.

The owner of Frank, Supper, and Lil’ Frankies, along with a business partner, are opening a new Italian restaurant called Sauce on the corner of Allen and Rivington Streets in early October. In addition to a dining room, the space will feature a grocery section as well as a demonstration kitchen that will host cooking lessons.

Last year, Frank Prisinzano, who runs three restaurants in the East Village, and Rob DeFlorio applied to open a fourth restaurant on Second Street and Avenue A. Citing the high number of restaurants in the area and the noise levels, the community board resolved not to support their application for a liquor license.

“They were right,” Mr. DeFlorio said about the decision. “We got excited because the place was two doors down [from Supper] and it was available. We jumped the gun.”

Upon going back to the drawing board and finding the space on Rivington, they were approved for a beer and wine license from the board immediately. The new restaurant, set to open on October 4, will be the first of Mr. Prisinzano’s ventures to cross below Houston Street. Read more…

Cristobal Rey

The East Village lost a raw food store when Jubb’s Longevity shuttered in 2008; more recently, it lost a vegetarian spot when Counter closed. Now, two doors down from the former Jubb’s, another raw food spot (this one a Los Angeles transplant) has opened its doors. Euphoria Loves Rawvolution soft opened at 504 East 12th Street last Thursday. Its grand opening is today, and in two weeks it will begin offering a weekly cleanse that can be supplemented with “emotional shamanic journeys” and colonics.

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Chelsia Rose Marcius

Our recent posts on bodegas in the East Village that continue to sell caffeinated Four Loko struck a nerve. Many readers took time to write in and express their thoughts on our investigation, and Gothamist picked up the story and republished similar articles twice.

The action wasn’t limited to the blogosphere either: The Local’s Chelsia Rose Marcius revisited the subject after the commotion, reporting that the State Liquor Authority planned to investigate the bodegas in question.

A common label, used both in the comments section and the Gothamist posts, was “narcs” and “snitches.”

“tacony palmyra” started off the name calling:

“Well, thanks East Village Narc! I’m sure the SLA or whatever authority is going to make sure these bodegas you individually identified will be in trouble if they find any, and now we get no more old school Four Lokos. Do journalistic ethics require that you play fun police?”

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Laura E. Lee Jack’s, 101 Second Ave.

Jack’s Luxury Oyster Bar, at 101 Second Avenue, is in the East Village, but not of the East Village. Jack’s introduces itself with the false modesty of a neighborhood speakeasy: The plain white door bears no sign, and the chief adornment of the facade is the air conditioner’s ventilation unit. The word “Luxury” is a sly joke as it applies to décor; it is meant to be taken with deadly seriousness, however, when it comes to food.

Jack’s has the most refined cuisine in the East Village, save for Degustation, around the corner on East 5th and also owned by restauranteur Jack Lamb, and perhaps also David Chang’s several Momofuku restaurants. The format at Jack’s, as at Degustation, is small-scale plates, though Jack’s is surely one of the city’s few seafood tapas places. The combination of small plates and a small menu means that a party of four can eat practically everything Jack’s serves, though a sounder approach might be to order two or three each of five or so dishes.

My wife and I invited our friends Roberta and Jerry, who say proudly that they never eat out. Jack’s, consequently, blew their minds. The first dish to arrive was the roasted oysters, which are served in their shell on a bed of peppercorns in a tureen, thus creating the momentary illusion that you have much more to eat than in fact you do. The oysters are made with chorizo, setting up a glorious battle between plump brininess and sharp smokiness. But there was much more. “I just got a whiff of something,” Jerry said. “I think it’s some kind of cheese.” Read more…

Meghan Keneally The logo for Restaurant Week.

The economics behind Restaurant Week means that a surprisingly small group of East Village restaurants are participating in the program.

The city-wide promotion, which runs for two weeks starting Monday, offers a prix fixe menu for $24.07 at lunch and $35 for dinner, the idea being that diners have the chance to get fancy meals at a lower cost. Because the majority of the East Village’s restaurants are less expensive already, many don’t see the need to participate.

“Our price point is extremely low — everything here is under $12 — so we don’t really fit the restaurant week model,” said Craig Koenig, one of the partners at Whitman’s restaurant on East 9th Street who is not involved in the promotion.

Yerba Buena, a Latin restaurant on Avenue A, is one of the five restaurants in the East Village that is offering Restaurant Week menus.

Participation in the East Village is low “because the restaurants are very small and a lot of people like to hit the really big places, like Gramercy Tavern and Nobu,” said Angel Deleon, the manager of Yerba Buena. “Those places may not give you the same value because the portions are small.”
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Roey Ahram

Area bartenders discuss the closing of Mars Bar and the question of commercialization versus preservation.

Mark Trzupek, manager of Life Café, 343 East 10th Street

“I don’t have any respect for landlords who come in and try to make money off people who have been here for 30 years and who took a risk in coming down here in the first place. Evolution always comes but at what cost? It’s changing the look of the neighborhood.”

Pepe Zwaryczuk, bartender at McSorley’s Old Ale House, 15 East Seventh Street

“Isn’t it a natural progression of life? It’s like how when Henry Hudson went up the river, the Indians looked over and said ‘There goes the neighborhood!’”

Randy Weinberg, manager of The Boiler Room, 86 East Fourth Street

“I’m absolutely 100 percent for it” — closing. “It’s all criminal to me, that they make their money off all the people that other bars throw out. It’s a real seedy crowd with a lot of drunks, a lot of druggies, and a lot of pickpockets. It’s not that they’re our competition because they take everyone we throw out because they’re bad. It’s a bad scene. It’s a part of the old East Village but really it’s time for it to go.”
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Ian Duncan Caracas Arepa Bar, 93½ East Seventh Street.

Caracas Arepa Bar, at 93½ East Seventh Street, between First Avenue and Avenue A, is just about the only restaurant in the East Village which is crowded at lunch — at least the only one worth eating at. This came as a huge surprise to the owner, Maribel Araujo, who told me the other day that she never thought the place would develop a lunch crowd. I said, “There’s no mystery — you’re the only place that’s that good and that cheap.”

Caracas is a tiny, clattering little restaurant which specializes in arepas, the soft corn-flour pocket bread eaten all over Venezuela. The arepa at Caracas has always struck me as the perfect combination of pliability — to hold the filling — and crispness. Maribel explained that while all arepas are cooked on a griddle, Caracas puts theirs in an oven for an additional 10 minutes, so that the dough on the underside fully cooks without losing its springiness, while the outside reaches the proper state of crunchiness. I have no source of comparison, but I once brought arepas from Caracas to Penelope Cruz, and she pronounced them completely authentic. To be strictly factual, I shared them with an extremely beautiful woman from Caracas who looks as much like Penepole Cruz as a mortal can. She was very impressed. And that was recommendation enough for me.
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Elizabeth Vulaj The owner of Mara’s Homemade, who recently announced that the restaurant is closing its doors, cited bike lanes that were installed last summer as part of the reason that the restaurant saw a decline in business.

Taxes and the rent have gone up but Mara Levi mostly blames the bike lanes for having to close Mara’s Homemade, her authentic New Orleans-style restaurant on East Sixth Street near First Avenue. If the customers come from all over the tri-state area and even beyond, she said, a restaurant has to have parking.

Ms. Levi said that she now pays double for taxes than she did when she opened seven years ago, but that the addition of the bike lanes, which opened in July and reduced the number of available street parking spaces, have significantly contributed to the business’ decline.

“We saw a drop in business the day those lanes came in,” said Ms. Levi. “When you go from twelve parking spaces per block to three, that makes a difference.”

In January, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg conceded that city officials should have notified residents when they decided to install the lanes. Levi said she was not even aware of any plans until one evening, where she saw construction workers toiling away on First Avenue.

“One night we come out, and they were marking lanes and paving,” said Ms. Levi. “It was a total surprise. There was no input from the community and it upset me a lot.”
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M.J. Gonzalez Giano, 126 East Seventh Street.

One morning not long ago, Paolo Rossi, the co-owner of Giano, an Italian restaurant at 126 East Seventh Street, was having his coffee when he was struck by an inspiration for “a new caprese for 2011.” The caprese is a classic Italian sandwich with tomato and mozzarella.  Paolo is fond of the classics but also, as a worldly Milanese, of the newest of the new. The caprese of 2011, now available on Giano’s menu,  would feature a basil-flavored soft bun wrapped around a paper-thin slice of tomato and buffala mozzarella ice cream.

After more than 10 years in New York, Paolo’s English is pretty good, but I thought I had misheard him. Ice cream? “It’s a ‘Wow’ effect,” Paolo explained. “I can ask Simone to make you one.” Simone Bonelli is Giano’s new chef.  He had, Paolo proudly told me, “worked seven years next to the number six chef in Italy” and had recently left the terribly pricey Per Bacco to cook at Giano. It was the middle of the afternoon, and Simone had just arrived on his Vespa; his  helmet, bright orange with a white racing stripe, was sitting on Giano’s curving, fan-shaped white bar. I felt like I had walked into a Fellini movie.
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Sophie Hoeller Cienfuegos, 443 East Sixth Street.

The Volstead Act prohibiting the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol from 1919 to 1933, may be a thing of the past, but secret bars (many of which are in our own backyard) are here to stay. These tucked-away little corners offer visitors a haven away from a city and a neighborhood overrun with bars and people. The allure of a clandestine bar lies in the thrill of the chase, the effort of finding the place, landing a reservation and actually getting past secret (and sometimes not-so-secret) entrances. Once seated and sipping old-school drinks without fear of arrest, comes a feeling of being in the know, an insider, and being able to make other New Yorkers feel like tourists.

Here’s our guide to the East Village’s most happening “secret” bars of today. Of course, we can’t guarantee access.
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Looking to go out to eat, but don’t want to leave the kids or the neighborhood behind? Community contributor Rachel Trobman takes a look at some local restaurants that make dining out with children a breeze.
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Liz Wagner Audience members at last night’s meeting of the State Liquor Authority committee of Community Board 3 listen as the panel refused to support a pair of license requests.

A Community Board panel Monday night refused to lend its support to plans to reopen two bars on Avenue A, despite pre-emptive efforts by business owners to smooth things over with East Village residents fed up with noisy nightlife in their neighborhood.

The State Liquor Authority Committee, which helps regulates liquor licenses in the East Village for Community Board 3, declined to lend its support to an application for the new space at 34 Avenue A, formally Aces & Eights, saying the area already has enough bars.

The committee also deflected a request from the owner of the former Superdive space at 200 Avenue A, explaining that the board had initially approved a license at that location for a bookstore or cafe. The State Liquor Authority subsequently permitted a change to let tenants apply for a liquor license, but the committee wants to stick with the board’s original decision.
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The “How did you meet?” question is almost as loaded as the “How did he propose?” question. Proposals you can plan, meeting your future girlfriend/boyfriend is usually left up to chance. To me, the meeting cycle of most single New Yorkers starts out at a house party, graduates to a bar, ends up online and after a self imposed break from dating altogether, your great aunt Esther fixes you up with a “nice young man” she met at services…or maybe that’s just me.
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Clint Rainey Frank Restaurant & Vera Bar, 88 Second Avenue.

Frank Prisinzano opened Frank’s, a trattoria on Second Avenue between Fifth and Sixth Street, in 1998, a time when the East Village was not yet a byword for funky cosmopolitanism. “I was the first of the small restaurants in the neighborhood,” Frank said, exercising perhaps a bit of poetic license. “People said we’d never make it. My ex-wife was out front, my father and I did the prep work.” They made it. Today the restaurant is the foundation of the Frankish empire, which also includes Lil’ Frankie and Supper, both on First Avenue between First and Second. And Frank himself is wreathed in glory, his restaurants celebrated in The Times, the Michelin Guide and elsewhere. Try getting a table at Supper on short notice.

Frank’s serves serious food in a self-consciously non-serious setting, which is to say that is very Lower East Side. On my first visit, I had a kind of galette made of an oozing straciatella the texture of crème fraiche on top of two thick slabs of tomato. Then I had fabulous beet ravioli. “It’s kind of a teenage-girl color,” my friend Nancy said — the purple of a scrunchy. It was a lovely summer day, and Nancy and I were sitting outside behind the white picket fence, which Frank has incongruously built out on to the sidewalk. Liesl Schillinger, the crackerjack book reviewer for The Times, walked by on her way to the Ottendorfer Public Library to return some books. That’s one of the nice things about sitting outside at Frank’s. Liesl was dressed for the season — vivid pink and lime green. “Her shirt was. . .” “The color of your lunch,” Nancy finished for me.
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Chaz Kangas.

Last week, The Local confirmed reports that the Sin Sin lounge would be closing at the end of the month and revising its format. Sin Sin, the scene of a fatal shooting in August, has been a source of complaints about noise and violence in the neighborhood. Chaz Kangas, a frequent patron of Sin Sin, offers his perspective on the club and its closing.

The absolute safest, most welcome and happiest I’ve ever felt in my adult life was at a bar in the East Village called Sin Sin. It’s a spot I’ve been loyally attending for almost five years. It’s where I’ve brought close friends, classmates, dates, co-workers and visitors, and they’ve all been given a lasting memory that will stay with them the rest of their lives. The end of October will see its doors close permanently, and in a climate where New York’s landscape is changing more than ever, I feel like I’m losing another connection to what first made me fall in love with the city. This is what Sin Sin means to me.

I began attending the club during my sophomore year of college in November 2005. I had always heard about their “Freestyle Mondays” Hip-Hop open mic since even before I had moved to the city a year prior. Word-of-mouth around the NYU campus was that it was next-to-impossible to get into. It wasn’t until the evening’s host iLLspokinN extended an invitation to me after he heard me rap at an NYU event that – after promising not order from the bar until I turned 21 – I made my Sin Sin debut. Stepping into that dim red room with a live band reinterpreting classic rap instrumentals next to a lineup of MCs eager to perform awakened a feeling inside me that was as exciting as it was validating. Here was a room full of people, whether performers or listeners, who felt the exact same passion that I did, and they’d been meeting there for the past four years for the same reason – the love of rap music.

The vibe of Freestyle Mondays at Sin Sin would remain the same from its 11:30 start-time until the lights came on at 3:30. I began attending every Monday and, after I moved to the East Village, would often stop by there to cap off other nights for its pleasant feeling of familiarity. Over the years, its accessibility and safe, comfortable atmosphere has allowed me to take countless friends, acquaintances and associates to Sin Sin for their first rap show. As a child I was always taught the importance of including others in things I loved and my time at Sin Sin was the adult realization of that virtue. More importantly, my experiences under those red lights really shaped me as a person. Most of the close friends I’ve ever had in the city, some who’ve moved away and even some no longer with us, have stepped through those doors. While Freestyle Mondays will continue and thrive at another location, the East Village will have lost a historic and important venue for young artists.

Chaz Kangas is a resident of East Harlem. He blogs at popularopinions.wordpress.com.

C.C. Glenn A typical sign outside East Village bars and restaurants on fall weekends.

Football season is upon pigskin fans, and you don’t have to wander far to seek out lively crowds, bargain beers, jumbo screens and crazy specials on caloric-heavy favorites like hot wings, burgers and mile-high nachos. The East Village, and its 10003 zip code, was recently ranked the nation’s second-most dense nabe for bars, with 73 in the area. (Wait – 73, is that all?)

On any given Saturday, Sunday and definitely Monday night, rowdy — and some not so boisterous — bars burst with sticky-fingered fans. Decked in jerseys and bright team colors, patrons take advantage, maybe too much, of cheap drink specials and let loose with indefatigable chants.

The East Village is a goldmine for football fans of all kind, bar none. But let’s face it, some are better than others, especially when seeking the winning combination of libations, vittles and good company. Jets and Giants games are ubiquitous, but where can you watch teams that are not housed in New Jersey? Urban Tailgate links like-minded fans with game-ready bars. Whether it’s the Bears or the Bulldogs, there’s a place where fellow football fanatics will, depending on the score, share your joy or pain.
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