They notice my Beavis & Butthead Doc Martens, and help me out when I’m running late for work and in need an extremely quick and delicious sandwich.
But I look forward to saying hello to Jan and Andrea. I often want to be left alone to read and write with coffee at a well-lit table. I’ll admit: I’m not the most gregarious customer. She wants customers to feel like they are family, too. Slimák is the Slovak word for snail, and also the last name of Andrea’s grandfather, who watches over the café from a framed photograph on the wall. “We are very personal with the customers, and become a big family and friends. “We want to bring the neighborhood together,” she told me. Now they have their own place (in addition to staying on with Newsbar), in a neighborhood Andrea describes as “like a vacation” compared to that one near Union Square. Before opening Slimák, they were part-owners of Newsbar on University Place in Manhattan. Andrea is also the café’s executive chef. I went in on opening day and met the friendly couple from Slovakia who run the place, Jan and Andrea Balascak.
#Newsbar new york manhattan windows#
For months, I peered in the windows and thought of the Tom Waits song “ What’s He Building?” Then in June, the sign went up: Slimák, with an image of a snail design on a cup of coffee.Įvery new detail thrilled me: wooden tables that evoke a European bistro, bright red bar stools, a pressed-tin ceiling - and then, one morning, the smell of coffee. Whenever I see construction in my neighborhood of Sunset Park, my first thought is, I hope it’s a bookstore/café. When it’s close enough that I can still pick up my wireless network, that amplifies my hope that it will be something great. from Tuesday–Sunday.Don’t miss the Chicken Apple Sausage Hash. Several zero-proof options like non-alcoholic micheladas and old fashioneds ($12) and two booze-free wines ($11 a glass) get good billing on the long drink menu, too, outnumbering even the five beers on offer.Ĭocktails are $17, including two frozen varieties : The Pan Am, with sparkling ros é, tequila blanco, lemon oil, Aperol, cayenne and the L’orange, with orange wine, Lilet blanc, Sweedish-style aquavit and absinthe.īar Blondeau opens at 5pm at 80 Whythe Ave. The bar spotlights natural wines by burgeoning makers, with orange varieties, a few large format bottles and a chilled red among the selections. Land plates like cucumber and melon salad ($15) and raclette with potatoes and Spanish ham ($18) are also available. Opening items include salmon rillettes ($18), tuna tartare ($26), swordfish ($26) and halibut and chips ($29). Photograph: Liz Claymanīar Blondeau’s small plates menu is replete with French, Spanish and Portuguese-inspired seafood. Big banquettes are covered in green velvet, shades of which carry over to the bar, that, in keeping with a secret pact apparently made by restaurant operators citywide, is marble-topped.
Inside, oak walls are lit from above and below to a golden glow, and an expanse of windows look out on the East River and Manhattan beyond. It’s the latest venture from the folks behind Acme, Chez Ma Tante and Le Crocodile, which opened on the Wythe’s ground floor to quick acclaim in 2019. New to the sixth floor of the Wythe Hotel, Bar Blondeau opens its 70-seat space tonight.
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