Best Neighborhood Bars - Best of New York 2006 - Nightlife

Skip to content, or skip to search.

Skip to content, or skip to search.

Bars in the Hood

The best local watering hole for wherever you live.


  • 1. Upper West Side

  • Emerald Inn

    205 Columbus Ave. , 212-874-8840

    This contagiously friendly Irish pub is a neighborhood hangout in a neighborhood where people don’t really �hang out.� People know each other by name, but they’re always willing to learn a new one.

  • 2. Hell's Kitchen

  • Bellevue Bar

    538 Ninth Ave.

    A true-blue dive bar. Old Bettie Page photos line the walls, the draft is served in plastic cups, and the clientele is strictly local. The jukebox has great drinking music�Ramones, Dean Martin, and Beastie Boys.

  • 3. Flatiron District

  • Flatiron Lounge

    37 W. 19th St., 212-727-7741

    The perfect combination of neighborhood bar and fashionable throwback cocktail haven. There’s usually room on one of the plush banquettes, and the fastidiously re-created twenties-style drinks are divine.

  • 4. West Village

  • Little Branch

    20 Seventh Ave. S., 212-929-4360

    If you don’t have the number for Milk & Honey (home of our best martini, page 78), come here: The cocktails at Sasha Petraske’s other bar, hidden belowground behind an unassuming brown door, are nearly as good.

  • 5. Financial District

  • John Street Bar & Grill

    17 John St., 212-349-4659

    With a biker barkeep, a seventies-style make-out nook, and a whisky list that’ll have you throwing darts crooked, this spacious rec room is a subterranean hideout from the overcrowded pubs nearby.

  • 6. Lower East Side

  • Fontana’s

    105 Eldridge St., 212-334-6740

    It’s not the friendly bar staff, the lofty, tri-level layout, or the always-packed Love Parade party on Fridays. It’s the fact that the Ludlow Street crowds stay away�which means that you, your friends, and Interpol’s Carlos D. can party in peace.

  • 7. Upper East Side

  • Session 73

    1359 First Ave., 212-517-4445

    Upper East Side bars that have live music. It’s rarer still to come by one that’s not dominated by twenty televisions.

  • 8. East Midtown

  • BUtterfield 8

    5 E. 38th St., 212-679-0646

    Straddling that line between unassuming after-work pub and thoughtfully accessible lounge isn’t easy, but this newbie does so nimbly. Ahi-tuna salad and a cranberry Cosmo, anyone? Or a cold Bud?

  • 9. Murray Hill

  • Pinetree Lodge

    326 E. 35th St., 212-481-5490

    This escape from the Third Avenue post-frat zoo�it’s all alone on a block of dark slab towers and a U.N. mission�is more East Village than east midtown. The pleasingly grungy garden helps.

  • 10. Williamsburg

  • Turkey’s Nest Tavern

    94 Bedford Ave., 718-384-9774

    At this proudly low-rent sports dive, lingering blue-collar locals watch Yankees games and play Big Buck Hunter II with the vinyl-loving upstarts who’ve been pricing them out. And a 32-ounce Bud is just $3.50.

  • 11. Park Slope

  • Barbès

    376 9th St., 718-965-9177

    Like the African marketplace in its namesake Paris neighborhood, this intimate, red-lit back room has a funky patchwork of offerings: world music, retro sounds, film screenings, and readings from neighborhood literati.

From the