The Lower Lower East Side – this constitutes as the weird bubble that isn’t the Lower East Side, isn’t Chinatown and isn’t Two Bridges. In my eyes, this is one of the most exciting, happening and quickly changing areas downtown.
Rewind three years ago and I regularly made the trek across Delancey to either the black hole of conscious time, known as Hotel Chantelle, or that Greenhouse on top of the DL, which is essentially akin to experiencing rush hour L-train claustrophobia in a tree nursery while someone is playing Pitbull deafeningly loud. *shudder*
Fast forward to the present and I’m now a frequenter of the Lower-Lower East side, first prompted by my excursions to Zuyuan massage in Chinatown for my beat up legs, but subsequently fueled by the boom of incredible and under-the-radar restaurants, bars and eateries popping up in this final frontier. While I know many of you enjoy your plight with Peter Pan Syndrome, the reality is that many of us are on the back nine of our clubbing times. So here’s a helping hand to enjoy the neighborhood anew:
1. Mr Fong’s – 40 Market St
Mr. Fong’s is kind of in the middle of nowhere, but the space is cool, the drinks are scarily cheap for Manhattan ($9 cocktails), the music is great and while everyone else is probably a bit hipper than you, the vibe is inclusive so you can easily fake it for the night or just peacefully co-exist
2. Metrograph Commissary – 7 Ludlow St
Metrograph is a new movie theater that projects everything on 35mm, featuring movie buff kind of movies, both old and new. The spot also is complete with a full-service restaurant called The Commissary – aka the fanciest movie theater concession stand ever – serving everything from steak tartare to roasted trout.
3. The Lucky Bee – 252 Broome Street
One of my favorite restaurants as of late, this new farm-to-table Asian eatery features dishes that include red curry beef cheek, coconut braised beef short ribs, and Szechuan chicken wings all in the comfort of a wildly decorated, quite pink and Instagram friendly spot.
4. Ice & Vice – 221 E Broadway
This genius and extraordinarily inventive ice cream spot focuses on textures, flavor pairs, and inventive mixtures in order to push the envelope of what constitutes as exotic and premium ice cream.
5. KiKi’s – 130 Division St
Kiki’s is a strange blend of a very hip restaurant and an Old School Greek restaurant, with a mixed scene of people who could be famous or could be your dad. The menu consists of homey, no-frills Greek classics, like moussaka and spanakopita.
6. Cheeky Sandwiches – 35 Orchard St
Cheeky is like a tiny cave for incredible New Orleans style snacks and sandwiches. Their fried chicken on a biscuit is fairly legendary; a thick cut piece of fried chicken, sandwiched in a biscuit and drenched in gravy and coleslaw.
7. Forgetmenot – 138 Division St
Forgtmenot is a dive bar meets a surfer’s living room meets a Greek/Tex-Mex diner. An amazing start to the night or an equally wonderful place to hunker down for the long haul.
8. Clandestino – 35 Canal St
Clandestino is a dark, very low key, comfortable neighborhood bar with solid drinks, great service, and no bells and whistles for the sake of bells and whistles.
9. 169 Bar – 169 E Broadway
This place is quite random, doesn’t make much sense but does make for a great dive: good music, oysters, a disco ball, leopard-print pool tables, pickle martinis, the ability to text in your drink order, dumplings and dinosaurs.