Making Cocktail Hour Happy Again

A Guide to Bibulous Bargains in a Currently Costly Cocktail City.

Cotton Anniversary at The Mix—What You Need to Know

Before we get down to the business of today’s post, a few words about the upcoming second anniversary of The Mix on Friday, Jan. 19.

Many of you reading this generously signed up for annual subscriptions and as Bar Regulars to The Mix on that day back in January of 2022. That means your re-up is approaching in 11 days time.

If you wish to remain an annual subscriber—and we certainly hope you do! We’d miss you terribly if you left and need your support!—you don’t need to do anything. You will receive an email alerting you to the upcoming re-subscription and your credit card will be automatically charged. (Be sure to check if your credit card information is current. Otherwise the charge will not go through and the subscription will be cancelled.)

Annual paid subscribers and Bar Regulars will continue to reap advantages and access that are not available to free subscribers. These include:

For Annual Subscribers

• Access to ALL posts. That means every single article, audio field report, essay, opinion piece, “In Seach Of…” feature, “Postcards” feature and lots and lots of recipes. There is nothing you’ll miss. Free subscribers can eyeball less than 33% of this content. (Note: if you prefer to go the Monthly Subscriber route, you’ll also have access to everything. But, really, you should go annual. It’s a bargain and will cost you 30% less.)

• Access to all “On a Toot!” features, which run on Fridays and can only be seen by paid subscribers. As requested by one subscriber, going forward we will conclude each “On a Toot!” with a handy list of all the bars and restaurants mentioned, complete with links.

The Bar Regular wall as it currently stands. Soon to be added: new Bar Regulars Gia Vecchio and Martin Doudoroff!!

For Bar Regulars

• In addition to your name proudly displayed in an engraved virtual plaque on the virtual Mix bar wall:

• Since I do not have a new book coming out in 2024 and therefore cannot offer you an advance, signed copy of a new volume. What I can offer, as soon you renew your current subscription, is a signed copy of any book in my catalog. That includes The Old-Fashioned, A Proper Drink, 3-Ingredient Cocktails, The Martini Cocktail and Mezcal and Tequila Cocktails. Or, you can have an additional signed copy of Modern Classic Cocktails or The Encyclopedia of Cocktails, if you like. And you don’t have to wait for the release date. You can ask for your book as soon as you renew!

• Also there will be a new feature in 2024 called “Regular Recipes.” These will be cocktail recipes only accessible to Bar Regulars. The recipes will be for new, original cocktails drawn from the best bars in the world. In all or most cases, they will be appearing for the first time ever in The Mix. “Regularly Recipes” will appear randomly, but at least 12 times a year.

• At a pre-arranged date in 2024, there will be a live Bar Regular get-together, where Bar Regulars are invited to join me for cocktail hour at a bar to be named later. I will give you plenty of advance notice of this, just in case any Bar Regulars who live outside the New York area want to make the trip in for the event.

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And now back to our regularly scheduled content!

Happy Hours Are Important Again

I’ve never been one for happy hours. To me, they mean being offered the worst cocktails and worst beers in the joint, accompanied by the worst service.

But challenging times call for creative thinking.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but craft cocktails have gotten expensive lately. Quite expensive. Sometime in the last year or so, cocktails regularly broke the $20 barrier, at least here in New York. Twenty dollars used to be the ceiling. The $20 cocktail on a menu was the special-occasion cocktail, the cocktail made with primo ingredients. Now, cocktails on most menus start at $20 and head north. And if you’re at a high-end restaurant, they start at $22 or $25. I haven’t felt sticker shock like this since going out in the mid-aughts, when the $28 restaurant entree suddenly became the norm.

This situation calls for a reexamination of expenditures, even for cocktail writers like me. Whereas, in the past, a second round at a bar was ordered without a thought, now such a decision requires some consideration and a quick peek at the bank account balance on the phone.

I posted something about this problem on Threads recently and found out I was not alone. Here’s what I wrote:

The post received nearly 500 likes and nearly 100 responses. Here are a few of the more noteworthy:

Now, before you jump down my throat with all your “yes, but” rebuttals, I understand all the arguments as to why prices are spiking—the perfect storm of rising labor costs; State-mandated minimum wage hikes; rising rents; static or rising material costs, etc.—and I acknowledge them. I am merely stating how things look from my side of the bar, where the numbers also don’t work. Just as there is little financial wiggle room for bar owners right now, I have minimal wiggle room in my wallet as well.

I don’t want to stop going out. (Frankly, I can’t. It’s my job.) So I have been forced to think creatively. Which means…

Happy Hours!!

It is time for me to consider them anew. There are excellent cocktail bars in New York that boast good happy hours. Not a ton of them, but they exist. And you ought to know about them for those times when the coffers are low or you’re still a few days from payday, but still want a quality drink in a public place! Also, some of these specials are not promoted (or well promoted) on the bars’ websites, so you have to be in-the-know.

You’re already used to the 5 p.m. post-pandemic dinner reservation, so here are a few suggestions for an early cocktail hour. And here’s hoping more cocktail bars follow their lead! (If anyone out there had additional info on other good happy hours, please chime in with the comment button below!)

Enjoying a cocktail at Bar Niban.

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Cocktail Happy Hours in New York City (And One Wine):

Bar Niban, Park Slope

This may be the best cocktail happy hour in town. From 5 to 6 p.m. daily, this esteemed Japanese-American-style cocktail bar has four offerings for a mere $10, the best of which is a Martini with Suntory Haku Vodka or Roku Gin and a Pickled Shallot. It’s a Martini that can stand toe to toe with any in the city.

Broken Shaker, Murray Hill

This hip watering hole on the rooftop of the Freehand Hotel has a 4-6 p.m. daily happy hour. The cheapest thing on the menu is the Daily Punch at $9. A classic Margarita costs $12. And there are two more involved cocktail creations going for $13-$15. There are also boilermakers selling for $12.

Clover Club, Cobble Hill

This Brooklyn Bar has always tried to give Brooklynites reasonable, Brooklyn-style prices since it opened in 2008. Their happy hour (4-6 pm, Monday through Friday) currently offers a Moscow Mule, Whiskey Sour, Champagne Cobbler and Hotel Nacional for $12.

Dutch Kills, Long Island City

Like Clover Club, this Long Island City bastion of the Sasha Petraske school of mixology offers a Moscow Mule, albeit for $14 (Sunday through Thursday, 5-7 p.m.). There’s also their Whiskey Fix (none better in the city) and a spin on the Army Navy Cocktail.

Gage & Tollner, downtown Brooklyn

This may be the swankiest happy hour in New York, given the elegant, 19th-century environs. Offered, all at half price, are oysters, $10 “teeny Martinis” (2 ounces, as opposed to 3) and select beer and wines by the glass. It runs Monday through Thursday from 5-6 p.m. and Friday-Sunday from 3-5 p.m.

Mr. Paradise, East Village

“Aperitivo Hour” runs Tuesday through Friday from 5-7 p.m., starting with $9 cocktails (an Aperol Spritz and a highball), a $12 “delicious Daiquiri” and $5 beers. There’s also a $10 burger with bacon-infused American cheese and a $2 oysters.

Porchlight, Chelsea

This far-west-side Manhattan eatery and bar has one of the best happy hours in Manhattan. It starts with a punch at $5 and continues with $11 Martinis, Mint Juleps and Daiquiris. Hours are 3-7 p.m., Monday through Saturday. On Sunday you can’t lose. Happy hour is all day! Have yourself a 3-Martini lunch and walk our with change from a $50.

Ra Ra Rhino, Bushwick

This Bushwick bar has a happy hour every day from 5-7 p.m. $10 cocktails include a Toki Highball, Sazerac, Daiquiri and Margarita. You can also get tiny versions of all three of their house Martinis for $25. And, best of all, Champagne & Caviar, which is a bottle of Miller High Life, a well shot of choice and a bump of caviar for $25.

Rum House, Theatre District

Catering regularly to tourists as it does, the dependable Rum House, tucked inside the Edison Hotel, has always had a solid happy hour. Running from 4-6 p.m., it is predictably focused of a variety of rum staples, including a Daiquiri, toddy and punch, all priced at $10. Right now, in the colder months, there is a hot buttered rum.

Holiday Bar, Greenwich Village

This fancy Village boite offers $10 Martini every Tuesday, all night.

Super Bueno, East Village

This new “Mexican-American cocktail bar,” which strives to put the “happy” in everything, has a happy hour Monday to Friday from 4-7 p.m. The $15.50 drinks (a little high for a happy hour tipple, but still) include their signature Vodka y Soda and Adobaba Bam Bam, made of mezcal, adobada falernum, pineapple, lemon, and pineapple shrub. And here’s a twist—there are happy hour non-alcoholic cocktails, too!

Sekund Sun, Astoria

This Queens local has a $10 beer-and-burger deal. This reminds me of my favorite New York happy hour of all time: The $5 Old-Fashioneds and $5 cheeseburgers they used to serve on early weekday evenings at the late, lamented Rye in Williamsburg. There is also a Dealer’s Choice cocktail for $10 on Wednesdays, and a similar deal on Tuesdays at its sister bar Basik in Williamsburg. (Oh, and word to the wise: everyday cocktail prices here are $14! So, it’s kind of a permanent happy hour over in Astoria)

Ten Bells, Soho

For you wine-drinking readers, Ten Bells has long had a good happy hour, selling carafes of red, white and rose from $7 to $20 up until 7 p.m.

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Farewell to Boston’s Drink

Drink, the most important bar in the history of the Boston cocktail renaissance, closed abruptly on Saturday, Jan. 7. Owner, chef Barbara Lynch, blamed an uncooperative corporate landlord. Lynch closed two of her restaurants the same day and 100 people were thrown out of work.

It’s a terrible loss for the city’s drinking culture. As I wrote in my 2017 Punch assessment of the bar:

There are only a handful of bar openings from the last 20 years that marked a sea change in U.S. cocktail advancement. Among them: Absinth in San Francisco, Milk & Honey in New York and The Aviary in Chicago. Drink is another. Drink took Milk & Honey’s bartender’s-choice ethos and doubled down on it. Not only is there no cocktail menu, ensuring that every order entails a personalized interaction with the bartender, there is no back bar where customers might spy their favorite brand and fall back into safe habits.

I finished the article with this passage:

I had that pairing at the center station, the largest of the three bars and Drink’s center court of sorts. It is the best place to observe Drink’s often idiosyncratic attention to detail. One night, a barspoon-wielding bartender carefully hacked away at the ice that had formed on a coupe just retrieved from the freezer. Another, they prepared a new slew of drinks, lined up a row of wide-brimmed Oxo jiggers, and began filling them, bit by bit, with the needed ingredients, before transferring the liquid to a mixing glass. It was an exceedingly odd, and in many ways terribly inefficient, way to build a drink. But it was excellent ringside entertainment.

As I left the bar on my final visit, I scanned the various counters. Several customers were watching the show and chatting with bartenders. Others, long used to Drink’s theater, were talking among themselves, just as they would at any regular joint. The place where I had sat already had its fresh napkin and water glass. Behind the bar, a plastic bucket of oranges awaited the squeezer. Drink sailed on.

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Odds and Ends…

There are other happy hours in other cities of course, including: Hotel Kinsey in Kingston, NY, which has $10 Martinis and $7 rail cocktails and $1 deviled eggs Monday through Friday from 4-6 p.m.; Bar Mordecai in Ontario has all you can eat spaghetti for $23 every Tuesday in January and February, as well as $7 house wine and $10 spritzes; Johnny Brenda’s in Philadelphia has a $7 smash burger and $7 Harvest Margarita… I will be in conversation with writer Clay Risen about my new book The Encyclopedia of Cocktails and about modern cocktail history in general, at Sunken Harbor Club on Jan. 28 at 3 p.m. Check the website for information on tickets soon… I wrote about Airport Martinis for Vinepair. I plan to write more on this topic, including some recommendations, on Friday’s post on The Mix. That post will be for paid subscribers only. Stay tuned!… Leave the World Behind, the new apocalyptic thriller from creator Sam Esmail, starring Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke, and Kevin Bacon is recommended. It is currently streaming on Netflix… Also recommended is Julia, the web series about the rise of Julia Child and her trailblazing PBS show “The French Chef.” We recently binge-watched the entire first two seasons in less than a week. Theater fans will be pleased to spot such stage performers as Bebe Neuwirth, David Hyde-Pierce, Danny Burstein, Jefferson Mays, Adriane Lenox and Robert Joy. And history buffs will enjoy cameos by such mid-20th-century cultural figures as James Beard (who comes off as laughing-on-the-outside), Andre Soltner (who comes off as sexist), Jacques Brel (wanton), Jean-Paul Sartre (comical), John Updike (earnest), Helen Gurley Brown, Blanche Knopf, Fred Rogers, Betty Friedan, Simone Beck and Vaughn Meader. As a cocktail critic, I have a few quibbles. There is no way Neuwirth’s character would order a Dirty Martini in 1964, as she does in one episode. And what exactly are those pink drinks she is sipping on in various scenes? They look like Cosmos, which wouldn’t be invented for another two and a half decades. And the Lillet bottles Simone Beck pours from are distinctly of modern design…. My brother Eric Simonson was interviewed in American Theatre by playwright Brian James Polak… Jason Zinoman, The New York Times’ comedy critic and a former theater critic for Time Out New York (where he was my former editor), wrote about how the slow death of theater criticism has had a serious impact on the health of the American theater as a whole… Be sure to catch the Max Beerbohm show at the main branch of the New York Public Library before it closes on Jan. 27. The English playwright, novelist, humorist and artist (1872–1956) was once world famous as a wit and arbiter of taste, but is largely forgotten today. This tidy, one-room show serves as a reminder of what a wickedly talented caricaturist he was (and I do mean wicked; his subjects couldn’t have been happy with the way they were rendered), and of his prescient thoughts on the subject of modern celebrity.