This Is How New York City’s Iconic Cocktail Bars Stay Relevant

In 2005, Michael McIlroy flew from Belfast to New York City and asked for a job at the best bar in the world. He was 21. The bar was Sasha Petraske’s Milk & Honey, which had opened in a former mahjong parlor at 134 Eldridge Street on Dec. 31, 1999. “I remember the first time I walked into this space,” says McIlroy. “We’re still here.” 

That “we” isn’t royal. McIlroy joined Milk & Honey around the same time as Sam Ross, who was fresh off a plane from Melbourne, Australia. In 2012, the duo took over the lease at 134 Eldridge to launch their first bar, Attaboy. And on New Year’s Eve, they celebrated 25 years of cocktail history at the address. 

McIlroy and Ross landed in New York during heady times for the cocktail scene. Tony Yoshida had opened Japanese speakeasy Angel’s Share in the early ’90s, while Dale DeGroff was busy reintroducing classic cocktails and fresh ingredients at the Rainbow Room. 

In the early 2000s, protégées of DeGroff started their own bar programs. Audrey Saunders reigned over Bemelmans Bar before she opened Pegu Club with Julie Reiner, who was running the Flatiron Lounge. Employees Only emerged in the West Village in 2004. Three years later, guests started to slip through a faux phone-booth entrance at PDT. 

Such pioneering work, and the discipline required to do so in a traditionally hedonistic industry, set the stage for today’s cocktail scene. It’s one with adventurous and knowledgeable patrons, exceptional bars in every neighborhood, and legions of bar professionals for whom drink-making and hospitality are a calling. That’s not to mention the basic elements of bartending we take for granted: jiggers, pristine ice, fresh-squeezed juices, and chilled glassware. 

“Twenty years ago, bartenders had to prove themselves, and prove that cocktails and mixology were worth looking at again, that this wasn’t the sour mix of the ’70s,” says Reiner. “Everything was so serious.”

Not all of New York City’s foundational craft cocktail bars have survived. Reiner’s Flatiron Lounge closed under threat of a monumental rent hike. Pegu Club, with its second-floor location in SoHo, folded during the pandemic, just shy of its 15th birthday. Petraske, who died in 2015, moved his Milk & Honey briefly to the Flatiron neighborhood before the building was set to be demolished. 

Plenty of these originals still thrive, however. They’ve become go-to spots for a new generation of drinkers. 

Employees Only turned 20 years old late last year. Even on Sundays, the bar crowd swells three deep after 10 p.m. On any weeknight at Angel’s Share, guests, most born after the bar’s founding in 1993, wait patiently in an alcove for a seat to open up inside. There’s never been a sign on the door at 134 Eldridge, but first-timers still find Attaboy and line up gladly in the cold on a Monday night.

In a saturated field, these bars have maintained relevance through adherence to their original visions of hospitality and drink-making. They evolved slowly and purposefully, even as craft cocktails boomed. And, in turn, they’ve become spaces to savor modern cocktail history and have a good time. 

Drink modern classics

When Reiner moved to Brooklyn in the mid-2000s, she thought that the area had a lack of cocktail bars. Her craft-focused cocktail bar, Clover Club, helped kick off the borough’s liquid ascent in 2008. In the days prior to the opening, as she tweaked recipes for Clover Club’s namesake drink, a shaken gin, raspberry, lemon, and egg white number, cocktail legend David Wondrich stopped by with a bottle of vermouth in hand. 

“He says, ‘Julie, I found the oldest printed recipe for the Clover Club, and it has dry vermouth in it,” says Reiner. Its addition was a revelation. “It went from this fruity gin drink to a grown-up, sophisticated cocktail,” she says. 

Reiner’s frothy, palate-cleansing drink is still Clover Club’s best seller. Indeed, some of the drinks formulated in the early days of the city’s cocktail renaissance are still bangers. 

Guests at PDT can sip a smoky-sweet Benton’s Old Fashioned, developed by Don Lee, the godfather of fat washing. Angel Share’s Flirtibird creation helped introduce New Yorkers to shochu cocktails. 

Ross is responsible for the scotch-honey-ginger Penicillin, as well as the equal parts bourbon-Aperol-Nonino-lemon Paper Plane. McIlroy contributed the Archangel, a category-bending gin drink with Aperol and cucumber, to Attaboy’s encyclopedic cocktail compendium. 

Business in the front, party in the back

“The Amelia is a million-dollar cocktail,” says Eric Lincoln, general manager of Employees Only in the West Village. “It’s blackberry, elderflower, lemon, and vodka with a little mint sprig on top. While it may be simple, it really pops.” 

The Amelia, thick with that blackberry purée, defies current trends. It couldn’t be further from clear and clarified. It’s an irrepressibly fruity drink in this age of dry Martinis. And, in a lot of ways, the Amelia reflects EO’s M.O.: “People just want to have fun,” says founding partner Dushan Zarić. 

Despite their crisp white jackets, bartenders at Employees Only never took themselves as seriously as they did their craft. Certainly, they’re more whimsical than some peers who posted rules in their bars, outlawed standing room, and looked down on vodka soda drinkers. The team at EO dances when inspiration strikes. They sing along to disco classics. They have free-poured from day one.

“You want to measure, hire a robot,” says Zaric. “We were doing the same quality drinks and using the same quality ingredients, but we couldn’t afford to have people wait 15 minutes while we meditated over a big ice cube. We were two or three rows deep every night, and you gotta get these people a drink within three minutes, or else.” 

Eventually, the craft cocktail world caught up to EO in regards to fun, if not the free pour. When Attaboy replaced Milk & Honey, McIlroy and Ross dropped reservations, suspenders, and bow-ties. They did not post a code of conduct, and the Rolling Stones edged out a strictly jazz playlist. Guests could show up for a Daiquiri and a shot without judgment. 

Around 2018, Reiner walked into Japanese-American Katana Kitten. She remembers thinking, “Bars can just be fun now. It’s a given that people are going to create thoughtful drinks and use fresh ingredients, that they know what they’re doing. Whereas, before, that was not the case.” 

The cocktail boom

For years, Reiner offered guests a money-back guarantee on drinks to nudge them away from vodka. In the process, she helped educate a generation of drinkers and bartenders. 

Still, none of New York City’s cocktail forebearers could have predicted the global craft cocktail boom. McIlroy and Ross took on consulting gigs in far-flung locales. 

“We were two kids, and within three years, the cocktail scene had exploded,” says Ross, who, with McIlroy, has a portfolio of six bars and cafes in New York and Nashville. “We were 25, having a really good time, and working five nights a week, and all of a sudden, we’re, like, doing these trips around the world.”  

Attaboy sits at No. 13 on the World’s 50 Best Bars List, an awards program that has turbocharged bar stardom. PDT sparked a speakeasy craze; Angel’s Share paved the way for a distinct Japanese craft cocktail scene, occupied now by Katana Kitten, Bar Goto, Martiny’s, Shinji’s, Bar Moga, Sip & Guzzle, and more; Employees Only pioneered international expansion and has a presence in Singapore, Sydney, and Los Angeles. At last count, approximately 200 people have stamped their bodies with EO tattoos. 

Reiner has published a cocktail book, judged competitions, appeared on a TV series, and launched a ready-to-drink cocktail line. She opened the 13-seat Saloon next to Clover Club, in part to accommodate demand for pop-ups, guest shifts, and traveling bartenders. 

The evolution of the craft cocktail bar

In 2022, after Angel’s Share had hobbled through the pandemic, Tony Yoshida closed the bar in a dispute with his landlord. It was one of the hospitality titan’s last remaining businesses. The bar community and multiple decades’ worth of regulars mourned. But Yoshida’s daughter, Erina, wanted to continue her family’s legacy. She ran an Angel’s Share pop-up with the team and, in the summer of 2023, reopened in a new West Village location. 

“My father did not want to continue. It was up to me,” says Erina. “One of my biggest concerns, as a second-generation business owner and someone continuing a brand legacy, was to make sure no one was disappointed, that I could build on a foundation while adding modern touches and maintaining our core values and traditions.” 

Angel’s Share 2.0 does not have a big picture window to observe New York City street life, but Erina did relocate the bar’s iconic, cheeky cherub mural. Her core team also transferred to the West Village, along with their formal, highly technical style of bartending. 

On a recent visit, bartenders buzzed egg white drinks with a silent immersion blender rather than a dry shake. Head bartender Tsunetaka Imada says that the bar’s small, three-piece shakers yield more control over dilution and aeration than standard tins. 

Imada poured a guest ’Round Midnight, a strange and sensorial combination of scotch, oolong tea, Pineau des Charentes, oloroso sherry, and blue cheese. The drink was designed to recall the profile of 20th-century cognac. In a sip, the spirit of Angel’s Share emerges. 

“[The original] was about having a hideaway, a place you could escape in the city and really immerse yourself in the whole experience,” says Erina.

For McIlroy and Ross, to stay rooted at Attaboy means allegiance to Petraske’s three-, four-, or (maximum) five-ingredient mantra. If a trend is so inevitable, they can’t avoid it (ahem, Espresso Martinis). They plant their version in a practiced Attaboy tradition, but they don’t feel pressure to evolve to the style of the moment. “We see these bars coming out with new drinks all the time. We’d be happy with three new drinks a year,” says McIlroy. 

Reiner, too, has maintained a classic cocktail backbone at Clover Club. She does not own a centrifuge. “We have cloudy cocktails. That’s my motto: Cloudy all day long,” she says with a laugh. Reiner also has held on to some of her original team, including Mauricio Santana, Pedro Rojas, and Ryan Lilola, all of whom uphold Clover Club’s history and culture. 

“Dale [DeGroff] taught us a great deal, including that people go to see a bartender, not the bar. The backbone of our business is return business,” says Zaric, who has regulars who visit Employee’s Only four days a week and travel to every one of the bar’s pop-ups. “That, and we’re small enough that we can always be filled with people who are looking for possibilities.”