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Alphabet City has its share of quintessential dives, but this is a throwback of a different sort, a lived-in, masculine bar that more than anything harkens to the classic literary speakeasy across town, Chumley's: The distressed wood floors, electric-candle chandeliers, and handsome back bar holding bottles of bourbon project a late 19th-century stateliness that perseveres even when Dave Matthews or the Spin Doctors are on the jukebox, and even though board games like Connect Four and Life accompany the old hunting and fishing tomes on the neatly inset shelves. Given their casual office attire, those at the bar noshing on earthy bar snacks and appetizers such as spiced pumpkin seeds and vinegar-drenched, almond-stuffed dates wrapped in bacon seem to have galloped here from above 14th Street, many of them from nearby Stuyvesant Town. Couples and groups share the plush communal banquettes in the slightly raised back seating square, using old trunks as tables for paninis that riff on classic ingredients (Memphis pulled pork, a Reuben) and the many beers on tap.
— Daniel Maurer