We recently headed up to New York City to catch the annual National Puerto Rican Day Parade, meet up with good friends, and of course, do a little bar hopping. The parade was an experience! The flatbeds carrying bands pounding out Latin music, salsa dancers, flag wavers, and New York politicians, streamed down 5th Avenue for hours. Millions of people lined the route with everyone enthusiastically waiving their Puerto Rican flag or proudly sporting its red, white, and blue colors.
While in NYC we also had the opportunity to catch up with our good friends Dave and Gail, who came from the island of Jersey for a Billy Joel concert. You may remember them from an earlier article about our visit to the lovely little island of Jersey in the English Channel. In addition, we also met up with Sammy and Lucia who were also visiting from their home in Montreal. They were also featured in one of our Oldest Taverns article on their home town.
Yolie is a native New Yorker, and more specifically she’s from The Bronx. As such, she has great admiration for and appreciation of the members of the NYPD and NYFD. Close behind, though, are the great bartenders of New York. We were fortunate to come across three of them during our visit. First was Allok tending bar at the ridiculously narrow Captain’s Bar and Grill on East 33rd Street (sorry no website available). The bar may only be like 9 feet wide from wall-to-wall, but it was a neat spot. Personable Allok, who is from Nepal (actually the first person we ever met from Nepal) kept our glasses full and the tunes playing on their excellent sound system. We met some very interesting folks at the bar like Coraima and Raven, and just had an overall great experience.
Next on our pub crawl was Jane Doe on West 44th Street. Jane Doe at first blush seemed a little fancy for our proclivity for dive bars, but Yolie saw their sandwich board outside advertising an inviting 4-8 PM happy hour so we couldn’t pass by. Inside we were greeted by Megan (without an H) behind the bar. She was attractive, sassy, hilarious, Irish, and made a great cocktail, too. Her breezy personality and repartee made the time fly. Unfortunately, we had to leave as we still had miles to go (our feet were already barking) on our NYC tavern walkabout.
Our third noteworthy spot was Molly’s Pub and Restaurant Shebeen on 3rd Avenue. Yolie loves a good Irish bar and Molly’s was it. By the way, a Shebeen is an illegal drinking establishment. Allister, a Scotsman, was stationed behind the bar waiting for us. We had such a good time with him that we didn’t check out until 2:30 AM. Needless to say, Allister made awesome cocktails and pulled us a few Guinness pints along the way.
We stopped in more establishments while in New York, but Allok, Megan (without an H), and Allister stood out from the rest. Anytime you’re in the Big Apple you’d be doing yourself a favor by stopping in to their places and having a drink with them, and please tell them we said “Hi”.