NYC Bar Crawl - The Tale of Two Sours
Last night my wife, her brother, and a friend met me in the city after work for some beer. My brother-in-law had recommended a few places, and I had been dying to try them, so this was the perfect opportunity to hit the Big Apple for some Big Beers.
Blind Tiger Ale House
Blind Tiger was our first stop. I got to the bar early, the three others were headed over from NJ. The place was packed pretty tight - it was difficult to make my way up to the bar for the first ten minutes. The wooden bar wraps around the back of the room with seating for maybe fifteen or twenty.
There are some high-top tables immediately when you walk in and a few others throughout, as well as some counter space along the front windows and some lower tables along the sides - maybe a dozen tables in all. You have to fend for yourself if you want a table, there's no one to seat you. You order your food at the bar and they'll call out your name when it's ready - if you can even hear them on a crowded Friday night! Blind Tiger is not a particularly large bar, but definitely maintains a warm, inviting, friendly vibe.
The bartenders are good, they seem to know their stuff, and most of the patrons are there for the beer - although quite a few tasteless light lagers were served too. The beer selection was great, they claimed to have near 30 taps I believe, all scrawled on a chalkboard above the bar. The bottles were listed out on a second wall, and they looked to have 40-50 choices there. I ordered a Stone Oaked Bastard and took a space at the bar when a couple of guys left. I had a pleasant chat with a professor of Psychology from nearby NYU.
We spoke of all things education, jobs, economy and technology. It was some of the most intelligent conversation I've ever had to shout over a crowd- but certainly worth the voice strain, and strangely appropriate in the setting. As conversation continued, I made my way through another brew - Victory Storm King from the cask (fantastic). My new found NYU friend left a while later, as I took the final few sips of the stout. So here I was in a bit of a dilemma, two beers in, slightly buzzed, no friends to be found.
So... I ordered another. I asked the bartender if they had any sour ales - much to my delight she told me, "We do have a Belgian sour on tap, but it's (something I couldn't understand over the crowd)." "I'll take it!" I exclaimed with a grin. "Are you sure??" she asked. "Um... yeah," I muttered, now less confident and somewhat concerned.
I watched as she poured what looked like a bloody mary into a tulip glass and handed it to me. "What the hell is that?" some guy nearby asked. I too was beginning to wonder. There was no head (I mean NONE, at all) on this 'beer', it was murky reddish brown, completely opaque in the center with a hint of light at the edges.
The smell was of typical Belgian sour funk- that sort of inexplicable scent of a sandwich left in a foot locker. The taste came in waves, extremely complex and very sour with a bit of that funk coming through on the finish. There was very little sweetness to the brew and the mouth was full while lacking carbonation.
It was as if the carbonation was replaced by a prickly spiciness- the sourness stung the back of the throat and tongue. The bartender may have been warning me that we were at the bottom of the keg, perhaps the beer was old. Strangely, I didn't mind it - I asked for a sour and I got a hell of a sour.
As I pondered over the beverage all too much, thankfully the others showed up. That was a good thing as the alcohol was starting to go to my head. They ordered DFH Palo Santo, Stoudts Winter Porter, and Ramstein Dark Wheat. At this point the bar was even more packed than when I got there, so we finished the round and then left. Overall Blind Tiger is a great place with a welcoming feel, good service and nice atmosphere. I would love to return on a quieter night.
Peculier Pub
The Peculier Pub was our next stop. We walked in and were greeted by a waitress who told us we could sit wherever we wanted. The room was probably twice as large as Blind Tiger but suffered from somewhat of an identity crisis. It's hard to describe the look and feel of this place: dark Irish pub meets the diner from Happy Days meets a grungy college hangout?
Set back booths for tables house stiff wooden benches cast with the green neon from signs in the window. The tin ceilings seem a bit out of place when you look down at the tables carved with names and vulgarities from many years of abuse. The tables do add a sense of character and age, however, ultimately setting the tone in an otherwise dirty and dated venue (avoid the bathrooms if you are a germaphobe).
Harsh as my words may sound, I don't mean at all to imply I didn't like the setting - while divey, I rather enjoyed the look and feel of the place. I think this is a bar with multiple personalities though, rather than one of a coherent theme or vibe. One look at the beer list and suddenly I stopped judging the furniture. There had to have been over 200 beers on the list from all over the world. Countries that I didn't even know were producing beer were represented on that list - Ukraine and Kenya to name a couple.
We ordered four Pipeline Hawaii Coffee Porters on tap and four burgers. The beer was fantastic and the Bacon Blue cheese burger was one of the best I've had in years. The place is cash-only and they won't start a tab. Every time the waitress brought us a round or our food we had to pony up. I'm not a huge fan of that tactic, but it's not disconcerting enough to whine about, and the beer more than made up for that fact.
We each had another round before we hit the road. Although I can't remember what the others had, I went with a St. Bernardus Prior 8 - a weak choice considering my options. It wasn't labeled clearly enough for me to decipher which St. Bernardus it was (I think it said St. Bernardus Trappist) which naively got me thinking perhaps it was the harder to find Abt 12 - to no avail. That brings me to my only complaint about Peculier Pub - the beer list needs some reorganization. Although categorized by country, the sub-level breakdown was difficult to follow and some of the labeling was obscure or vague. Overall, though, the list was one of the most comprehensive I've ever seen and I will certainly go back for another burger!
124 Rabbit Club
124 Rabbit Club is so discrete and hidden away, it's not even listed on Google maps. While I'm sure that's just a matter of time, you would be hard pressed to find this place if someone didn't point it out to you first. The bar is in one of those psuedo-underground basement setups, you have to walk down a half dozen steps to the entrance.
If the door wasn't propped open with a couple of people hanging outside, I wouldn't have even known it existed - just a heavy studded black door, speakeasy style. You're supposed to ring the buzzer to get access, like during the days of prohibition. The bar extends the entire narrow length of the place with perhaps 15 stools and a table at each end. With people seated at the bar while others stood behind them, it became almost impossible to squeeze through.
The only light came from a few makeshift beer bottle candles on the bar top, and a couple of red darkroom lights in the refrigerator units. The dim lighting allowed me (barely) to make out the exposed brick and mortar walls, cracked, worn with age. Although this was the priciest of the three bars ($10 drinks), the beer list had brews I've never seen and can hardly pronounce.
Although there weren't as many beers listed as the other places, the exhibit was undoubtedly quality over quantity. I noticed they had five or six sours listed, one of them was the infamous Duchesse from our beer tasting. I told the owner/bartender I enjoyed the Duchesse and asked if he could recommend something else.
He warned me that some don't like the Duchesse because of its sweetness, but he had something from the same brewer. I'm a gambling man, I decided to take the risk. I ended up with the Verhaeghe Echte Kriekenbier - a Belgian sour brewed with cherries. While I did find it a little syrupy, it wasn't all that bad. The owner admitted it wasn't his favorite, and he found it a bit ketchupy. I kind of wish he hadn't said that, as I still had half a glass of ketchup remaining, but I was able to shake the notion and enjoy the rest of the beer. The real star was the Rodenbach sour ale that my brother-in-law's friend ordered.
I've had the Grand Cru, but I believe this was their classic red sour. Not at all too sweet or syrupy, the Rodenbach was everything a sour should be without being overbearing. 124 Rabbit Club was my favorite joint of the evening. I enjoyed the seclusion and secrecy, the owner's passion for beer, and the surreal experience of drinking in an old speakeasy.
This was one heck of an outing, and I'm hurting a bit right now as I may have over done it. But hey, all in the name of science, right? Check out these fine establishments by following the links from the embedded Google map above. The Rabbit Club is a little harder to find info on, but a quick search will return reviews and write-ups.
Sat, February 28, 2009 in Beer Bars
Reader Comments (3)
I make the drive down to NYC a couple of times a year to visit my brother, and you've just given me a great new set of beer bars to target. Now I can feel a little less of a fish out of water when I'm in the city -- while not being at the mercy of my brother's taste in beer!
Thanks for this post, I felt like I got a brief taste of a great night of bar hopping without paying the tab. Of course, my morning coffee doesn't compare to those sours, so I think you still win.
This is a great, comprehensive pub crawl report. All great bars, each in their own way. When planning your next pub crawl, you and your pub crawling friends might check out BeerMenus.com. It has all three of these bars with google map links. The site has about 60 of the best beer bars in the City actually updating their menus themselves weekly and in some cases daily. Looking forward to your next report.
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