3 Intriguing, Just Opened New York Bars To Try

18.11.2023 - 21:31 / forbes.com

Tigre It’s unusual to hear a rum based cocktail described as “joyful pain” but that happens at Tigre, the intimate, retro chic bar that opened this week on New York’s Lower East Side. The reason for this description is the rum, or rather rums, in the recommended cocktail Airmail composed of champagne and three symbiotic rums from Martinique, Venezuela and Haiti, countries in a region in which slavery played a part in their production. The social history detailed by the maître d’ is, obviously, painful but the cocktail itself is delicious, a choice on the “then” section reinventing classics of the six part menu. (Their screwdriver also has eight types of citrus including three types of orange.) Creative concoctions such as Mister Softee with Singani, sage and pina appear in the “Now” section and martini fans can dictate exact specifications with a ratio of 4:1 to 16:1 among other options.

The room is designed to emulate a sophisticated jet setter’s residence from the 1970’s or 1980’s (also the decades of its booming soundtrack) with gold Ultrasuede walls, jacquard velvet banquettes with tiger embroidery and chocolate leather seats at the small tables plus a horseshoe shaped green Brazilian quartzite bar. The entrance doesn’t give any hint that such a plush setting awaits within, however: it’s a nondescript door plastered with handbills and graffiti guarded by a doorman checking reservations. Given the bar’s immediate popularity, though, and the intimacy of the room, even with reservations, patrons often have to wait on the sidewalk until guests inside vacate their space. (The staff hopes that sorts itself out soon.) What also should be sorted out soon, or at least as soon as the downstairs kitchen is finished, is food to go with the drinks. Since the team behind it also operates beloved New Orleans style oyster bar Maison Premiere in Williamsburg, raw bar items— and definitely oysters— should be on the way.

Paradise Lost The entrance to this bar in the East Village is also nondescript: a door marked with a green symbol but no name with a buzzer to be let in. Once inside, though, the design comes at you from all sides: white fur lining the door; thick foliage lining the walls of the hallway and in the bar itself, a panoply of vivid colors, flashing colored lights (that change when certain drinks are ordered) an eight foot tall altar, taxidermy items, a leather bar and tables designed to look like surfboards and snakeskin banquettes. The team behind it describes it as a tropical hellscape, amusing and slightly sinister, a fantasy allegory/throwback tiki bar.

In this florid setting, the cocktails couldn’t be simple presentations—and they’re not. They arrive embellished with pinwheels and flowers, flaming