The five best cocktail destinations in NYC

[slkinsey]

Pegu Club still has the best food and by far the most comfortable setting of any bar in NYC.

[lettezilla]

Mayahuel seems new to you and supposedly has decent enough food.  Might be worth checking out.

Drink in Boston is awesome.  Even Eastern Standard has a really interesting program.  Just saying.

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thanks, mayahuel was definitely one I was wondering about.

drink absolutely has the most potential, and I have been there two or three times when I was really impressed. but more times than that, things went wrong for a number of different reasons, and the high cost of small drinks has ended up making me prefer to stay home. There are a few excellent bartenders at ES, and their food is decent and reasonably priced, so we do end up going back there more frequently than anywhere else. However, there are just quite a few bartenders that either don't seem interested in cocktails (which seems weird to me) or bugger up pretty fundamental drinks (the hot pink sazerac was pretty scary!). I know my standards are unrealistically high, but as I have yet to be disappointed by TVH, I know they aren't impossible.

[weinoo]

I know my standards are unrealistically high, but as I have yet to be disappointed by TVH, I know they aren't impossible.

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I don't think your standards are too high, and only by letting those places know what your standards are will they ever be able to meet them. A hot pink Sazerac, in my book, is not a Sazerac.

Back to Mayahuel - at 7, you will probably be hard pressed to find seats at the bar - it's tiny. But give it a try anyway. If you call PDT for a reservation, you can always request seats at the bar.

There's also Ssam Bar with Don Lee's cocktails and some pretty darn good food, though vegetarianism may be frowned upon.

[daisy17]

I would try for Mayahuel - you can always move to the bar when seats open up. The food is very good and you won't have trouble vegetarian-wise.

[taion]

Tailor claims to be serving an expanded bar menu for the remainder of August, but I've never been by to check, and I don't know offhand how vegetarian-friendly their menu is.

I don't know offhand if Ssam Bar is still as anti-vegetarian as they were; for my money, though, if I wanted to get a dinner at a good restaurant that also offered top-notch drinks that are characteristic of the NY cocktail scene, Ssam Bar would be my first pick.

[sickchangeup]

The cocktail experts above have put this place in the 3rd category, but everytime I do a cocktail pairing (barkeep's choice) at EMP I am blown away by how good they are, how competent and serious the program there is. This would presumably be placing your food requirements above your alcohol requirements, but I'm not aware of any fine dining program in the city that even comes close to touching it. I also don't understand why all Meyer bars are lumped into one sum, EMP's crew seems vastly superior (for example) to USQ Cafes barkeeps. FWIW, the best cocktails I had were off-menu items, and for my money (and to reveal how far apart from this crowd my tastes truly run), better than anything I had at PDT for example (I sat at the bar at neither place in my visits, seems important to note, although the bartender at EMP came to pour/check in a few times throughout my meals).

[slkinsey]

So, what was so good about your EMP cocktails? What made you like them better than the PDT ones?

[sickchangeup]

So, what was so good about your EMP cocktails?  What made you like them better than the PDT ones?

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Hmm... It occurs to me that I am running upstream into a crowd of people that feel quite differently, and people who's experience and knowledge in the cocktail arena runs circles (many circles) around my own. This could be rough...

To answer your first question, the two cocktails that stood out above the others at my most recent meal were off-menu, so I can't tell you every ingredient. But one was made with Genever Gin and a generously wide slice of lemon peel (not a classic Martini however). The aroma was really enveloping, floral, clean, beautiful - made me sad to finish it. It reminded me of the way many fine dining kitchens refine and present their food - find an ingredient, enhance the flavor in a subtle yet classic way (in terms of it's flavor profile), present it beautifully and make sure it tastes delicious. The devil really being in the refinement and the small details, repetition vs. independence I guess. The other standout drink was a take on the daiquiri concept, where green chartreuse was flamed table side before being introduced to the cocktail, once again giving the main alcohol (in this case rum) a more subtle rounded overall enhancement. I detected hints here and there that they were paying attention to new trends (one drink contains a single big square cube of ice as a simple example), but somewhat cautiously incorporating them into classical things - not dissimilar to Humm's cooking approach perhaps.

The service level from the bar is also incredibly high, which doesn't matter to the taste of a cocktail, but matters some in the overall experience of the meal. Like I said, the barkeep tends to walk out to the table a few times to check in, and my comments generally play into the direction of things for further courses. Probably helps that I always dine early and tend to order the more expensive menus for dinner when I go.

By way of contrast, and this is a gross generalization of (in the case of PDT) an impression gathered over 2 visits and about 15-20 cocktails (groups of 4 each time), the cocktails struck me more as being the realization of independent intellectual exercises ("Let's put Benton's bacon into bourbon") rather than something that began with a deep respect or understanding for the particularities of the alcohol itself and evolved from there off the shoulders of years of experience and generations of tradition. It seems less like the way a classically trained chef would approach ingredients, incorporating years of formal learning, slowly finding spots where they can evolve their own cuisine to depart from the classical methods, and more the way younger talented cooks might approach food - more aggressive, experimental, fast lane kind of stuff. When the stuff works, and it's done to your tastes, it's fantastic. You mentioned up thread that when you found that one guy working at that one bar, it was awesome - but too many challenges in finding that one guy led you to give up, cause you were back on less certain ground with the general crew.

Ironically, I generally don't mind this approach and in fact sometimes seek it out, when dining. But in the case of PDT, and perhaps generally cocktails, I personally felt like I landed into too many cups of someone else's evolution as a bartender (I have a vague recollection of a cocktail that sought to enhance bitterness of an ingredient, and accomplished just that), a few too many misses, to make me prefer it as a cocktail destination outright.

[weinoo]

The service level from the bar is also incredibly high, which doesn't matter to the taste of a cocktail, but matters some in the overall experience of the meal.  Like I said, the barkeep tends to walk out to the table a few times to check in, and my comments generally play into the direction of things for further courses.  Probably helps that I always dine early and tend to order the more expensive menus for dinner when I go.

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A nice and thoughtful answer, sickchangeup. Perhaps EMP is not one of the "five best cocktail destinations in NYC," if one is heading out specifically for cocktails. But it certainly needs to be put on the list for that altogether more difficult actualization of food and cocktails or cocktails and food that is somewhat lacking in the serious cocktail bar discussion.

I actually think 'inoteca Gramercy works at it, but at a markedly different level as far as the food goes.