RESTAURANTS • First Person
Eel Bar is an answer to a question we never needed to ask: How to follow-up three of this city’s most reliable, repeat-visit restaurants to open in the last decade? Hart’s, since 2016, is Bed-Stuy’s jewelbox bistro, a restaurant so loveable the idea of someone disliking it is borderline offensive. Around the corner, The Fly, dishing out little else than roast chicken and natural wine since 2019 — not that it needs to, having perfected both.
And since 2017 on the LES, of course, is the Portuguese-ish wine bar Cervo’s. It was where I had my last meal out on the eve of the 2020 lockdown. In the back room that night, under the skylight, I closed my eyes, took in the space’s perfect aural textures and narcotic smells, and thought: Remember this — remember how good a New York City restaurant that hits right on a Thursday night can feel.
This trifecta represents the kind of places that anchor not just neighborhoods, but a certain kind of dining milieu, serving what you always latently crave, vibey, forever great (but also, somehow egalitarian). New York should be lousy with these kinds of places. Instead, they’re an increasingly rare quantity.
And so the moment I found out that Eel Bar, from that same group, was opening this summer I knew I’d be there. On opening night last Thursday, there we were, two at the end of the bar inside the Orchard Street space, scored at 630p with ease. It likely won’t be the case for long, though we were told they’re holding a decent swath of the spots for walk-ins.
That dining bar runs the length of one side of the room, which is bisected in the center by a working bar and open bar-to-ceiling bottle storage. On the other side of it is a smattering of tables, lined against velvety banquettes, under pink and green neon, and strips of tiled mirrors. It’s discreetly stylish, with a few small, distinctly sexy touches of flair.
Much like Cervo’s and Hart’s, the food is wine bar fare, saucy snacks, small plates, and a few mains, with some hyper-seasonal touches, anchored by an Iberian palate (this time, more Basque than Portuguese). We thought we went too heavy on the openers — piquillo peppers stuffed with crab; an order of fried mussels, served on the half shell; a plate of white asparagus over bottarga and mayonnaise — and ended up surprised, each one lighter and more deft than their menu descriptions.
Same went for the potato salad topped with a layer of trout roe that landed in front of nearly everyone down the bar. It was another creamy, briny dish that in lesser hands could play as highbrow-lowbrow schtick, but again: implausibly light, with a peppery kick at the end, the dregs of which we dragged a baguette through, trying to relive as much as possible. For the mains, we ended up with a homey plate of meatballs strewn with french fries soaked in their tomato sauce, and the burger, topped with anchovies, roquefort, and a pile of white onions. At $28, sans-fries, it’s not a cheap entrant to the city’s burger scene, but it’s a deeply funky, savory delicious iteration of a standard that’ll linger, much like with that Cervo’s lamb burger (also, with anchovies). A tipple menu top-heavy with vermouth shouldn’t surprise you, as it (and maybe something from the northern Spanish-heavy wine list) is exactly what you should be drinking with all this.
If none of it sounds conceptually off-the-charts, rest assured that the pleasures here lie in these dishes’ executions and in the way they’ll leave you feeling. Whether or not Eel Bar could be the Restaurant of the Summer feels like a moot question, in that respect — it’ll be the restaurant of many nights, of many, many seasons ahead of us. –Foster Kamer
→ Eel Bar (Lower East Side) • 252 Broome St • Tues-Sat 530-11p • Reserve.