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Shervin’s Cafe

Shervin’s Cafe 1 Bars Tapas and Small Plates Beer Bars Wine Bars East Village

When we visited this cafe, beer, wine and tapas bar we were immediately struck by the coziness of the 7th Street niche. Everywhere around us were cluttered old cameras, spent film cases, quiz cards, board games, old radios and TV sets, vintage couches, bare bulbs and chandeliers, and even an ironing board serving as a coffee table. Looking into the tarnished mirror hung behind the bar and chatting with the owners, including the eponymous Shervin, we discovered their passion for coffee, wine, good food, and relaxation. By the time we left we already felt a long day of walking melting away.

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Tokio 7

Most business owners know how difficult it is to bounce back after being robbed. Makoto Wantanabe has done it twice and, ironically, has a thief to thank for the very birth of Tokio 7. Makoto was globetrotting in the early 1990s when he arrived in Southern California on what was supposed to be the penultimate stop on his tour. He befriended a homeless man and let him stay in his hotel room for the night, but Makoto awoke to find everything except for his passport was stolen. Stranded with no money and far from his home in the Japanese countryside, Makoto called one of his only contacts in the U. S., who worked at a Japanese restaurant in Manhattan. He scrounged up enough money for a bus ticket and was off. While in New York, Makoto felt that men’s clothing suffered from a lack of style. Having always had a knack for fashion, he knew he could change that but lacked the funds to open a store with brand new clothing. So, after several years of saving his wages as a waiter, he founded one of the first consignment shops in New York City. Tokio 7 now carries men’s and women’s clothes, with the overarching theme being, as Makoto says, that they are simply “cool. ” The clothes are mostly from Japanese designers and name brands with unique twists. In the store, clothing that has been donated with a lot of wear is labeled “well loved. ”Despite its importance in the community, the shop fell on tough times during the COVID-19 pandemic. To make matters worse, Tokio 7 was looted in the summer of 2020 and had 300 items stolen. When Makoto contemplated closing his doors permanently, longtime customers begged him to reconsider. Resilient as ever, he set up a small photography area in the back of the shop and sold a portion of his clothes online to compensate for the decline of in-person purchases. Reflecting on his journey, Makoto marveled at the whims of fate. Had he not been robbed all of those decades ago in California, he had planned to start a life in the Amazon rainforest

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Ruffian

Strolling on 7th Street in the East Village, it is quite easy to miss the narrow Ruffian Wine Bar & Chef's Table. Doing so would be a shame, however, considering the unique wine-drinking experience that owner Patrick Cournot, a Greenwich Village native, presents to the customers that pass through its Moroccan-style arches. For starters, Patrick’s “dynamic groups of wines” - mostly from southern France - go beyond the usual red or white. Here, the red wines offered range from translucid to inky black, and the white wines from pale with hints of green to deep amber. Customers can enjoy their wine while looking at contemporary art by Alberto Burri and Patrick’s wife, Elena Hall, who also designed the space. Everything from the wine bar’s organic design to the intriguing dishes prepared by chefs Josh Ochoa and Andy Alexandre “puts you in the right frame of mind to enjoy the wine, ” according to Patrick. The polished 3, 000-pound concrete bar and colored ceramic patterns on the wall create a contrast with the colors of the wine, which Patrick thinks often get lost in the dark wood and dim lighted décor of most wine bars. The kitchen is located behind the bar, so customers can be reminded that Ruffian Wine Bar puts as much care into its food as its wine. As for the dishes, it is difficult to describe the menu as a whole because, according to Patrick, a vast percentage of it changes every week. The dynamic quality of the food selection, though, allows Patrick to “incorporate flavors as they come out” seasonally. Yet whatever the menu of the day is, Patrick wants to ensure that the dishes have an intense flavor, which often translates into doing a contemporary twist on familiar ingredients. Two members of the Manhattan Sideways team were able to sample Josh’s culinary inventiveness with a dynamic dish made of lentils cooked in salt water, dressed with yogurt spiced with curry leaf, mustard and cumin seed, and topped with beet sprouts, crunchy noodles, Thai basil, and lemon juice. The result was a perfect appetizer with many levels of texture that, Patrick assured us, “brings up and shows the vibrant elements of the wine” that accompanies it. More than that, it shows Patrick has reached his goal for his wine bar: “to do ambitious things in a small space. ”

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Blue & Gold Tavern

“By 1958, it was a social club. My grandfather's friends from Ukraine — everyone who had survived WWII — were spending time here. ” Mike’s grandfather, Michael Roscishewsky Sr., was very strict. He had a set of rules by which he ran Blue & Gold, named for the colors of his country’s flag. He wore a three-piece suit and tie topped with an apron every day. He also would not allow in anyone wearing denim, and women could not come in unaccompanied. “When he ultimately let women come in on their own, as well as people wearing jeans, he thought it was the end of the world, ” Mike shared. Mike’s grandfather traveled through Germany in the 1940s, then to England, and eventually landed in the East Village. He owned a grocery store on 10th Street, saved up enough money, and opened Blue & Gold. He ran the bar until he retired in 1981, and his daughter, Julia, Mike’s mom, took over. On Christmas Eve of 1989, when Mike was only seventeen, the bartender took the evening off. “I covered her shift, and since then I have worked behind the bar, here and there, while running the whole place. My mom retired in full in 2002. ” Back in the day, Blue & Gold opened at 9 a. m. as they welcomed the retired firemen, police officers, and other members of the community. “We were a family. If I was five minutes late, there was always a line of retired guys waiting for me. ” In the 1970s, Mike’s grandfather was one of the first to have a color TV, allowing people to come in to watch the Yankees. He also had an air conditioner, making it the place that everyone wanted to spend time. The flow of clientele was slow and steady: they would come in from opening until noon, have two or three drinks, and leave, and then the next shift would arrive to occupy the barstools between noon and 6 p. m. “They had their quotas of what they could drink and afford. Nobody drinks like that anymore. ”As the scene in the East Village began to change, Mike witnessed Blue & Gold transform from a place for old Ukrainians, to a hangout for musicians, poets, and artists, to becoming a college bar. During the week, they would greet the older clientele and on the weekends the younger folk. More recently, Mike found there is a switch where the regulars change up every five years or so. “Most come to New York with a hope and a dream and it takes them about this amount of time to realize it isn't, necessarily, going to work. However, all roads continue to lead to Blue & Gold. If you come to New York, you find your way to us. ”

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Ladybird

At Ladybird, vegetables take center stage. According to Devante Melton, marketing director of DeRossi Global, Ladybird's parent company, “Instead of creating meat substitutes or serving dishes that propel that same kind of addiction to meat, we decided to create a vegetable bar that would be a sexy alternative without any of that pretense or exclusivity, ” Since 2016, Ravi DeRossi has been on a mission to turn his restaurants vegan - and change the way we think about meat. “New Yorkers are very, very dedicated to meat as a necessity, ” says Devante. “We go day-to-day in this kind of routine without actually understanding our food systems - what’s available, what’s produced locally. In doing so, we condition ourselves to believe that these things are necessary, but we don’t feel any need to lower our carbon footprint or create any environmental changes for us as a people. One way to do that is to go vegan. ”Ladybird’s aesthetic is a cross between one's rich great-aunt’s living room and a trendy bar. Gold-framed mirrors adorn the marble-patterned walls, while plants dangle from the ceiling. Customers sit in green velvet booths or at the mirrored bar and drink wine-based cocktails served in crystal punch bowls. The food evokes the same sort of airy opulence as the décor. Manhattan Sideways sat down to sample a variety of items from the menu: Beginning with The Reunion Ibis cocktail - In keeping with the bar’s theme, the drinks are named after birds - followed by some of the restaurants most favorite dishes: Three types of toast (avocado, cauliflower, and mushroom and onion), kale salad, baby corn, and melt-in-your-mouth fried eggplant. The star of the show was a beet and avocado ceviche, a dish that made us wonder why anyone ever bothered making ceviche with fish. That is, in the end, the goal: to engineer a new sort of culinary literacy, where one's taste buds are far too occupied to even consider missing meat.