Minetta Tavern

Profile

Like the Waverly Inn, McNally’s Minetta Tavern is being billed as a revival, not a first-run production. The original joint opened in the thirties, in a corner space on Macdougal Street, and flourished, over the years, as a bar, a red-sauce Italian joint, and a hangout for generations of scraggly Village pub crawlers from the Beat Poets to old Joe Gould. Now McNally has taken the place upscale and stationed a giant bouncer by the front door, but he’s wisely left most of the old saloon-era interior intact. There’s a refinished oak bar in the front of the room, but the original wood paneling behind it is decorated with stylish little silhouette cutouts from the thirties. There are new black-and-white checkered tiles on the floor, as well, and the banquettes have been covered in McNally’s trademark crimson leather. But a faded, smoke-stained fresco of the old Village still adorns the back room, and the walls of the joint are still plastered with original framed pictures of figures from the city’s vanished past, like Eva Marie Saint and the boxer Jimmy Braddock.

The neo-speakeasy model, as practiced at places like the Waverly and the progenitor of the genre, Freemans, on the Lower East Side, has tended to focus more on ambience, and the peddling of retro cocktails, than on first-rate food. Thankfully, McNally has changed all that. As at the restaurants it seeks to imitate, the vibe at Minetta is buzzy, exclusive, and properly chaotic. But the menu is a compact, carefully edited compendium of practiced brasserie favorites (lamb tartare, steak frites) and hefty, old-fashioned tavern fare (marrow bone speckled with sea salt, two kinds of hamburgers, a $148 côte de boeuf for two), and, to the amazement of the hipsters at my table, almost everything on it tastes good. — Adam Platt

Slideshow: Seriously Transcendent Takes on Oatmeal (9/30/12)

Roasted marrow bone, $25; Black label burger, $33; New York strip, $65

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New York Magazine Reviews

• Adam Platt's Full Review (5/4/09)

Best of New York Awards

• Doing the Earl Proud (2012)
• The Five Most Influential Restaurants of the Past Six Years (2011)
• Best Meat and Potatoes (2010)

Featured In

• Reasons to Love New York 2011: Because Plus, Where Else Can You Get an $11 Fried Sardine Skeleton? (12/19/11)
• Adam Platt's Where to Eat 2011 (1/3/11)
• The Best Places to Live in NYC: Our Critics’ Favorite Comestibles in Selected Neighborhoods (4/19/10)
• Where to Eat 2010: Best New Restaurants (1/4/10)
• Adam Platt's Where to Eat 2010 (1/4/10)
• Where to Eat 2010: Best Cocktails (1/4/10)
• Eat Cheap 2009: The Best Burgers (7/20/09)
• Where to Drink Now: Overexposed Yet Underrated (5/25/09)