Bar Chimera Lives Up to Its Name
Spending the Martini Hour Within an Illusion, Inside a Landmark; PLUS, a New "Drinking With Landmarks"; and "Bar Shot" Reviews of Eagle Rare 25YO and 30YO Bourbons.
If you want to know what it was like to dine out in New York in the 1990s, go to Bar Chimera. It’s ostentatious, sleek, full of beautiful and clearly wealthy people, everything is expensive, and the atmosphere pulsates with excitement. That was the ‘90s.
When we arrived on a recent April evening, less than a week after the bar had swung open its doors, our coats were whisked away in seconds, and glasses of Champagne were slid into our mitts to make up for the fact that our seats at the Martini Bar were not quite ready yet.
Soon enough, however, they were available. So we were momentarily burdened with both Champagne and Martinis, as we watched liquid nitrogen billow from high-stemmed Martini glasses atop the mirror-topped bar before us.
The ceilings at Bar Chimera are very high, as are the windows and the back-lit back bar displaying dozens of brands of gin and vodka. Everything seems to climb to the heavens. The bar is aptly named. Bar Chimera’s logo indicates the owners had the mythical lion-goat-snake creature in mind when naming it. But the word’s larger meaning also works, in that the bar is so fantastical as to almost amount to an optical illusion.