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Opening Hours
Today: 4pm–4am
Sat:
2pm–4am
Sun:
2pm–2am
Mon:
4pm–2am
Tues:
4pm–2am
Wed:
4pm–2am
Thurs:
4pm–3am
Location
700 East 9th Street
The Wayland 1 American Bars Cocktail Bars Alphabet City East Village Loisaida

Ask those who are determined to travel all the way east why coming here is worth the trek and they will tout the tasty cocktails, the delectable food, the live music and the warm, relaxed atmosphere. This of course is true, but we think what makes The Wayland worth the trip is its character, beginning with the old piano in the corner, the farm table seating and the bar bursting with wildflowers in glass bottle vases. The bar's attraction is in the details, apparent with the fresh kale garnish in their Garden Variety Margarita and the egg whites and cumin in their Cumin My Cocktail. After the drinks, we went on to savor the scrumptious hot nuts that were rubbed with peppers and rosemary, the Brussels sprouts that came raw, shaved, and mixed with green apples and spiced walnuts, and an entree of pulled chicken. Needless to say, our time at The Wayland was quite pleasurable.

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The Wayland 1 American Bars Cocktail Bars Alphabet City East Village Loisaida
The Wayland 2 American Bars Cocktail Bars Alphabet City East Village Loisaida
The Wayland 3 American Bars Cocktail Bars Alphabet City East Village Loisaida
The Wayland 4 American Bars Cocktail Bars Alphabet City East Village Loisaida

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Ace Bar

When Ace Bar originally opened in 1993, New York City was “pretty lawless, ” according to its owner, Michael Hilf. As he and his business partner, Jim Abraham, built the bar over the course of a year, they would sell beers off of a makeshift scaffold and plywood counter at night and use the money to buy nails and paint to resume working on the space in the morning. Michael joked that this arrangement would not be possible in today’s era of strict inspections and safety codes. To build his customer base, Michael would do what he called his “Pied Piper routine, ” which involved approaching strangers on the street, offering to buy them a beer, and luring them back to Ace where his bartender was more than happy to fulfill the promise. “It was actually really effective marketing. Word spread pretty fast, and I didn’t have to do that after about the first three months. ”From the beginning, Ace Bar attracted “an incredible community of creative people. Black, white, Latino, gay, straight, punk, goth — everyone was accepted, as long as they weren’t corporate. ” Comedians commingled with war veterans and artists. Many customers were drawn to Ace for its music selection, which was carefully curated by Michael himself. He recalled that the likes of Joey Ramone, dressed in all leather even in the high heat of August, would visit the bar to enjoy his playlist and nurse a drink. Throughout the decades, Ace Bar has remained a neighborhood staple and a great place to spend the night with a group of friends. One of the bar's highlights is its vintage games and décor. When entering the bar’s two spacious rooms, you cannot miss the notable collection of old-school lunch boxes and thermoses that are displayed in a glass case. Further inside, there are plenty of activities to choose from, including darts, pool tables, pinball machines, Big Buck Hunter, arcade games and, of course, the skee ball machine. Occasionally, Michael misses the early, lawless days, when pets were welcome in bars, smoking indoors was common, and business was sustained by word of mouth rather than online reviews. “I could keep going on and on like this. Maybe I should write a book. ”

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Veselka 1 Breakfast Ukrainian Diners Brunch undefined

Veselka

The warmly painted walls inside Veselka envelop the room in folky florals and traditional Ukrainian symbols. Hanging from the ceiling are glowing milk glass globes that seem to replace the sun or moon depending on the time of day — and it could be any time at all, as Veselka is open for twenty-four hours, seven days a week, serving a smorgasbord of pierogis, bowls of borscht, and other expertly prepared comfort foods — Ukrainian and otherwise. Wlodymyr Darmochwal planted roots for Veselka when, as one of the founders of the neighborhood Plast organization (akin to the Ukrainian boy scouts, teaching survival skills and Ukrainian language), he was asked to create a weekend study program for the boys. In response, he opened a five-and-dime style counter at the corner of East 9th Street and Second Avenue where the boys could buy paper clips, cigarettes, lighters, and, notably, bowls of borscht and other basic Ukrainian foods. The business expanded into another storefront on East 9th Street a decade later. After Wlodymyr’s passing in 1972, it was taken over by his stepson, Tom Birchard, who was later joined by his son, Jason. Today, having worked at the restaurant since he was a teenager, Jason has “done every single job possible here except cook the borscht. ”When Jason joined the team, one of his first projects was to find out, “How late can we stay open? ” It turns out the answer was “all night. ” As Tom and Jason once again prepare to expand the restaurant into an adjoining storefront on 9th Street, they are eager to continue serving the next generation the kind of traditional Ukrainian food that Wlodymyr would have had at his counter more than sixty years ago.

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Duo 1 Women's Clothing Vintage undefined

Duo NYC

The essence of Duo is in its name; it is two things at once. It is dulled colors and clean lines, minimalist in feel but simultaneously filled with warmth and softness. Both young and old, vibrant and calm, it is modern and fresh but brings to mind memories of simpler times: of handwritten letters, cozy Sunday afternoons and soft breezes over the wide open fields of northern Minnesota, the owners’ home state. Conflicting and complementing all at once, Duo is the product of two minds at work. Sisters Wendy and LaRae Kangas have created a perfect little fashion oasis that fits right in with the small town vibes of Manhattan’s East Village. Growing up, Wendy and LaRae pestered each other and fought over clothes, as siblings will do, but in 2008 they decided to open up a shop together. Today, they work with dealers and emerging independent designers throughout the country and pick all their clothing, accessories and home goods by hand, combining masculine and feminine styles with modern silhouettes and vintage traces to curate a timeless collection of quality, classic pieces. “It’s a very personal process, ” they told me, “and we put a lot of love into our shop and our collections. ” Nothing at Duo is mass-produced, and most of their merchandise is recycled. The sisters pour their hearts into the shop and work hard to stay true to themselves while keeping an eye toward the future, expanding their business into the world of e-commerce and social media. “It’s important to stay current and give the customers what they want, ” they said. They love what they do, and working with family makes it even more fun, according to the sisters. “It makes work smooth when you don’t have to verbalize what you’re thinking, ” they told me, “We just know what each other is thinking and it makes choosing products and daily operations much easier. ”Duo is a celebration of creative spirit. It is clear that the sisters revel in the one-of-a-kind individuality of each and every one of their customers who come to them looking for pieces that will express their own unique style. When explaining what they love about their work, they said, “It’s great to make a customer feel better when they walk out the door. ”

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Tuome

“My parents were definitely not thrilled when I opened the restaurant, ” said Thomas Chen, executive chef and founder of Tuome. It didn’t matter that he had taken classes at the International Culinary Center or worked at restaurants as renowned as Jean-Georges, Commerce, and Eleven Madison Park. His parents, Chinese immigrants who had opened a restaurant to survive, believed that working as a chef was not the way to a better life. Since Tuome opened in 2014 to great critical acclaim, Thomas’ parents have started to come around. But no matter what they think of the restaurant, there is no denying the huge influence they have had on Tuome. According to Thomas, many of the menu items—including his personal favorite, chicken with gem lettuce—are modeled on the foods he ate as a child. Even the restaurant’s name is a tribute to his mother, who called him “Tommy” as a child, but pronounced it “Toe-me. ”Thomas has also taken culinary cues from the high-end New York restaurants where he started his career, and he describes Tuome as “American with Asian influences. ” A trip to Asia played an important role in his cooking style as well—he was especially inspired by the made-to-order dim sum in Hong Kong and the unique flavors of Thai food. I was eager to ask Thomas about his entrees, many of which require hours of preparation. The “Pig Out for Two, ” one of Tuome’s best-selling dishes, is cooked for fifteen hours in duck fat, while the veal and the egg tartare both take three hours to prepare. “We do sell out at a certain point, ” Thomas explained, “because we only have one convection oven and the amount of food we can produce is limited. ” But the restaurant has never had any catastrophes; a former accountant, Thomas has a system in place to predict how much food he will need on any given night. With its hip décor and intimate atmosphere, Tuome is perfect for a weekend date night. But Tuesdays may, in fact, be the best day to stop by, as Thomas tends to showcase off-menu dinner and dessert items at the beginning of the week. I asked him for a few examples and immediately regretted it—for the rest of the afternoon, I daydreamed about duck dumplings, summer sundaes, and Chinese beignets with goat’s milk caramel, fig jam, and red bean glazed ice cream. When I asked Thomas what he cooks at home, he smiled sheepishly. “I don’t really cook at home, ” he said. “Water bottles are the only thing in my fridge. ” Instead, he often goes out to eat at restaurants near his house, finding inspiration in their unique flavors and ingredients. Though he doesn’t live in the East Village, he decided to open a restaurant there because he was attracted to the atmosphere. “It’s a melting pot for different cuisines, ” he told me, “and the locals really appreciate good food in a casual setting. ” Tuome is also a favorite among foreigners—particularly tourists from France, Switzerland, and Hong Kong—who discover the restaurant online. On my way out the door, I asked Thomas about the challenges of owning a restaurant. The hardest part, he told me, is the lack of sleep—on a normal day, he arrives at Tuome around 1pm and doesn’t leave until 1am. But he loves experimenting with new ingredients and creating his own menu, and he is constantly searching for ways to improve the restaurant. And that is what he plans on doing in the near future: changing Tuome’s menu seasonally, mixing things up, evolving.

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The Cabinet Mezcal Bar

Replacing the recently relocated Mace, and owned by the same company, the Cabinet - opened in May 2019 - serves a carefully prepared array of mezcals, tequilas, and ryes in a cozy and unique location in Alphabet City. The Manhattan Sideways team was immediately astonished by the attention to detail displayed by head bartender Christine Helmer in creating the atmosphere, as she busily prepared candles before presenting us with cocktails and telling us about the business. It did not take me long to realize that this attention to detail extends to almost every aspect of the bar, from its well-crafted, variously flavored cocktails to its idiosyncratically romantic, home-like interior energies curated by a decor reminiscent of a hybrid Victorian and US Western cultural era. Originally from Germany, Christine easily contextualized her bar’s specialty, mezcals, as often misperceived as too “smoky” or “aggressive” by less open-minded New York bargoers. She resists this misclassification. She notes that mezcal’s flavor potentials are almost endless and are underappreciated by many United States bars, and her cocktails proved her point; after trying the sweet, foamy, lime and watermelon flavored Primer Beso, I realized that mezcal was not relegated to the smoky aftertastes I remembered from the first time I drank it. It was true: “the more you learn about it the more you realize you didn’t know anything, ” as Christine reflectively mentioned. While the Romero and the Caminante were more harsh, they were not devoid of their own individually intricate flavors that I suspect become more complex as one’s mezcal palette develops. The Caminante was served in an Oaxacan gourd, which Christine noted was the traditional vessel for mezcal consumption among Oaxacan indigenous farmers. These liquors are a passion for Christine, who enthusiastically added that the Cabinet offers free educational seminars for its customers who want to learn more about the world of mezcal. Although she recognized that mezcal was indeed “in, ” she emphasized that the public’s affinity to liquor fluctuates dynamically with time, and that she has seen certain liquors rise and fall quickly in popularity during her career. Her knowledge of the industry was fascinating, as she described her ascendance to the Cabinet as built upon a combination of reading quality cocktail books and talking to bartenders and mentors. If anything was clear from the interview, it was that mezcal was much more than a job for Christine. She traveled down to Oaxaca, Mexico earlier in 2019, dancing in agave fields as she directly worked with mezcal farmers. She identified a number of differences between the production of mezcal in these regions of Mexico and the production of other types of liquor by large corporations in the US. Mezcal’s versatility and diversity is a product of its resistance to corporatization in the US, and it is subsequently relatively unpopular in US markets (in contrast to the “industrial” tequila); it is not only sustainably and locally developed, but is also often reflective of the other types of crops grown in the region and their flavors. The bar put its money where its mouth was: all of its liquors come from small producers, many with eye-popping approaches to graphic design that added to the stimulating decor behind the bar. The variety of these liquors “grouped by species” was notable, and they sure make you feel alive. For Christine, a constant struggle is making sure that the world of cocktails is something accessible, simple, and easily understood, rather than pretentious, arcane, and elitist, something she carries with her from her trip to Oaxaca. Cocktails do not have to be scientifically produced, and as she recognizes, sometimes it is just about finding what works along more “spiritual” lines. Her balanced approach to bartending was relieving; the overall vibe of the bar felt both renewing and healing, not overwhelming. After finishing the cocktails, we were served some delectable chicharrines with a chili-lime salt, and some soft, warm tamales from Lupita’s in East Harlem.