Spiking Coffee Gives New York Bars a Fresh Buzz

July 21, 2016 by Leave a Comment

Coffee shops, restaurants and bars around New York City are now spiking coffee drinks.  Customers are happy with the new concoctions and barista-bartenders are becoming inventive.

Kobrick Coffee Company is a coffee bean roaster that operates a retail shop in the Meatpacking District.  Besides the usual coffee drinks, the café serves “coffee cocktails” which are alcoholic drinks mixed with caffeine.  The Mexican Jumping Bean is a top-seller, and is made of espresso, tequila and liqueur.

SushiSamba, a Japanese-Peruvian fusion restaurant in the West Village, serves an espresso martini made with Bacardi Black rum, spiced maple syrup and dark chocolate liquor.

Fair Weather Bushwick, a bistro in Brooklyn offers a Shochu Latte during brunch that’s made with shochu (a Japanese distilled beverage), espresso and hazelnut syrup.

Mother’s Ruin, a popular bar in NoLIta, serves a Coffee Cordial Boozy Slushy which is served frozen and made up of coffee, white rum, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

Sweetleaf Coffee, a café located in Long Island City and Williamsburg, makes a Java Flip from Jamaican rum, bourbon, egg yolk, cream and coffee liqueur.  Cold brew coffee is condensed and raw sugar is added.

Sweetleaf’s coffee and cocktail service don’t overlap, with cocktails starting at 5PM.  Mr. Vincent Vee, an experienced beverage manager is quoted as saying “They’re both high-profit businesses, but they’re only high profit for a short period of the day.  So when you have them both behind the same doors, it can make a lot financial sense.”

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Angel’s Share Alums Open New Cocktail and Ramen Bar

July 11, 2016 by Leave a Comment

11-rokc-009.w710.h473.2x.jpgShigefumi Kabashima and Tetsuo Hasegawa, both formerly of the popular speakeasy-esque bar Angel’s Share, have just unveiled the full cocktail menu at their new spot in Hamilton Heights. The bar is called ROKC (short for Ramen, Oysters, Kitchen and Cocktails), and the menu is a playful American twist on the high quality Japanese drinks at Angel’s Share. Examples include a Thai tea spiked with absinthe and cachaça, a matcha latte with Japanese whiskey, and a fruity cocktail called “Flower” with shochu, lavender, elderflower, and cranberry, served in a lightbulb and presented over ice in a trapezoidal pot.

These cocktails are all newly unveiled, but the ramen and limited raw bar have been available for a few weeks during he restaurant’s soft-open. Ex–Maison Premiere sous-chef Jeff Srole has been heading the seafood menu, and Isao Yoneda (formerly of Totto and Hide-Chan) is responsible for the three types of ramen bowls.

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Bartender, There’s a Logo in My Drink

June 1, 2016 by Leave a Comment

The goal of bars these days is to make sure that guests recall the name of the place, no matter how strong the drink.  Cocktail napkins, matchbooks and cardboard coasters have been replaced by new, glittery branding techniques.

At Dante, a bar in Greenwich Village, the name of the place is stamped into the ice cubes.  The owners had a copper ice stamp custom made in Hong Kong.  The guests take pictures of the cubes, and one of the owners is quoted “In an age of Instagram, it’s hard to ignore free publicity.”

A bar in Seattle named Canon makes it easy to remember its name by branding citrus peels.  One of the owners says that his team is trying to provide guests with a “Wow” moment, or a sensory experience that takes them out of their day.

The Aviary in Chicago sears its name onto wooden coasters.  When the guests order a rum drink called “Brand New to the Game”, a pine coaster will be branded at their table with the name of the bar.  The fire created by the brand will be used to fill the inside of the glass with smoke before it is filled.  And the guest may take the coaster home.

Bar Leather Apron in Honolulu revived the bar token (special coins that can be exchanged for drinks).  A complimentary cocktail coin was created as a way to promote events or give away to visitors.

The San Francisco gin bar Whitechapel uses picks (perfect for spearing olives) to remind drinkers where they are.

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Syndicated Lets You Dine and Drink with Your Favorite Flicks

February 2, 2016 by Leave a Comment

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The hospitality industry is well known for creative hybrids, and snacks and beverages have a way of popping up everywhere from bookstores to art galleries to flower shops. So the movie theater/restaurant combo should seem only natural – most main stream movie theaters make their profit at the snack counter, and “Dinner & a Movie” is still the most popular date choice. With that in mind, it’s exciting to see this concept done well, with as much attention paid to the food as well as the movies.

Syndicated, a new bar/restaurant/theater in Bushwick, does just that. With a thoroughly curated list of screenings (each night features either one or two flicks, often with a theme connecting them), and an equally thoughtful menu (including house cocktails, local craft beers, and dishes like heritage porchetta), Syndicated is a sure sign that the Bushwick night life is getting even livelier. They have special programming for Oscars week, but more than a few nights in January sold out early, so buy tickets online early

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Momofuku Nishi Cements an Unexpected Trend: Annotated Menus

January 25, 2016 by Leave a Comment
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The Menu at Yours, Sincerely

The opening of Momofuku Nishi in Chelsea generated buzz for lots of reasons, and it remains difficult to get a seat at David Chang’s Italian-Korean-Don’t-Call-It-Fusion restaurant. If you have managed to eat there though, you might have noticed that the menu is heavily footnoted with information about the dishes, from “Notes of parmesan come from chickpea hozan” on the Cacio e Pepe, to “Kathy Pinsky’s Bundt Cake 2.0” on the Pistachio Bundt Cake.

Including these footnotes does more than just provide information about the dishes, which is useful in it’s own right; it lends the menu (and the restaurant, by extension) more personality. Granted, it is a very specific personality – quirky, irreverent, and casual – but it’s a personality that many restaurants are striving to achieve, especially as fine dining falls out of fashion. So it’s no surprise that other restaurants have followed suit with menu annotations of their own, including Bushwick cocktail bar Yours, Sincerely, where they’ve crammed the drink list with handwritten notes, and included a flowchart to help you choose a drink. It should also be noted that the speakeasy-style Pouring Ribbons went a similar route with their menu years ago, adding scores for each drink on scales from “refreshing to spiritous” and “comfortable to adventurous,” along with a graph on the first page (in case you’re a more visual orderer).

We certainly can’t recommend that every restaurant starts doodling on their menus – in the wrong context, it can be off-putting and confusing. But if the atmosphere of your enterprise is shooting for approachable and quirky, this is one way to make the menu more engaging. And when guests are engaged as soon as they see the options, they might just notice a drink or dessert they didn’t even know they wanted.

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Partying like it’s Against the Law

December 28, 2015 by Leave a Comment

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We may have finally hit peak-trend with ’20s era speakeasy bars and secret watering holes, now that the relatively well known (if still ostensibly “secret”) bar Angel’s Share has it’s own secret offshoot. But the fun of places like these, which reward a little internet research or in-crowd know-how with great drinks and exclusivity, is undeniable. We may not see as many pop up in 2016, but it doesn’t seem like they’ll be disappearing too quickly either.

The question is, with all these prohibition era bars around offering nightlife Gatsby would approve of, what do you do for the biggest party night of the year? Many of these bars simply do what they do best on New Years Eve: offer great cocktails and an opulent setting, and wait for those in-the-know to show up (and avoid the $100+ cover at many other places). Some offer even grander celebrations, like the Manderley Bar at the McKittrick Hotel (which you may know of as the setting of the nightlife experience that is Sleep No More). They’ll be hosting a Winter Masquerade this year with a  number of ticket options for those looking to go all in. Sleep No More‘s sister performance, the incredibly opulent Queen of the Night, likewise has a special New Year’s party which promises to (somehow) be even bigger than their usual performances. Excess is what these options offer, and they aren’t for the faint of heart. But is there any better holiday to really gild the lily?

For a list of more ’20s-themed New Years celebrations, click here.

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Williamsburg’s Biblio Closes

December 22, 2015 by Leave a Comment

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In a statement posted to Facebook this week, the owners of Biblio at 149 North 6th St. in Williamsburg announced that they would be closing the doors to their book-themed bar and restaurant. Biblio opened in 2013 with a cozy, library atmosphere and a number of literary touches, including a menu divided into sections like “Forward” and “Preface” which they simplified in eventually pared down to gastropub classics and lighter takes on comfort food.

In their statement on Facebook, the restaurant’s owners thanked their patrons from the past two years, but explained that business has not been strong enough to sustain them, particularly in 2015. They did not give a specific date for their final day.

To read more, click here.

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Apres-Ski Themed Bar on Eataly’s Roof

December 10, 2015 by Leave a Comment
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Photo via eataly.com

Eataly, the Italian food mecca on 5th avenue, has opened the pop-up Baita bar on their roof with an “Italian Alps” theme. According to their website, they’ve “replaced the stone walls and nearby hills of grazing sheep with a retractable glass roof and views of the neighboring Flatiron building, but the food and drink will make you think you’re in the Italian Alps, right in the middle of Manhattan.”

Holiday shoppers, tourists and Eataly regulars can all enjoy tasty seasonal fare, like polenta and homemade sausage, while sipping on the sort of drinks you might crave after a long day on the slopes. Eataly’s brewery Birreria is running the pop-up, and pints of their cask ales will be available alongside a full wine list and house cocktails. Featured among those are mulled wine and Bombardino – a cream based Italian cocktail reminiscent of eggnog – but if the ski lodge aesthetic isn’t enough to make you forget the unseasonable warm weather we’ve been having, there are plenty of original cold cocktails as well. Other classic Italian goodies like fresh pasta and charcuterie from the market below will also be available.

If you visit and fall in love with the festive atmosphere, Eataly is also renting out Baita for parties of up to 175. But get there soon – the pop-up will only be around through March of 2016.

To read more, click here
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