If you come to Mission Chinese, be ready to leave.  With only 6 bar stools and a buzz that guarantees a 2 hour wait for a table, the odds are against you.  But for a solo diner, on 2 of the last 3 visits, a bar seat cleared in under 5 minutes.  Did he say “scrambled egg” dumplings?  It’s a little hard to hear with the pumping rap rumbling your bones (though not unpleasantly).  Tattooed and dyed bar staff are friendly and informed.  The bar is near the front door scrum waiting for a table (and often, checking phones for alternative plans).   Mission Chinese promises an unexpected adventure:  in the excellent food, the downtown crowd, and possibly in the East Broadway neighborhood, should you be turned away by a 2-hour wait.  It is young, fun and worth the effort.

Off the warren of streets that is Greenwich Village, is the tiny Blue Ribbon Wine Bar. 18 seats – all of them bar stools – are occupied by well-to-do youngish people, get-a-room couples and wise-looking locals. The bar staff (always 2 men, it seems) are knowledgeable and earnest. Yes, there is plaid, but not exclusively so. Food ranges from the always excellent Big Eye Tuna & Avocado (small, but dinner for me) at $18.50, to oysters, various French Bread “pizza” creations, and so on. You can definitely have cocktails and dinner here, though the food is light and prepared in an appropriately tiny kitchen by 1 guy.  So don’t go for a full menu.  Go for the wonderful & friendly patrons, excellent grazing, attentive bar staff, and wonderfully warm room (low light, wine bottles, bubbly chatter). The space is the size of my 2^nd apartment in NYC (some time ago); 18 people is a wall-to-wall crowd. Even though turnover is fast, have a back-up plan.

Tucked away behind the lounges of the Whyte Hotel (literally behind closed doors), is a small bar serving a reduced menu from, Little Park (the wonderful front of house restaurant).  It is perfectly dim (light matters a great deal to 1FTB). Seated patrons murmur, but room is not crowded (the hostess, a room closer to the front lines of West Broadway, keeps it that way). Fireplace is a lovely touch on a cold sleeting night. Bar staff of one is technically capable and is often a different person each day (it seems). Big eye tuna tartar at $18 tops the short menu. In a hotel, so does not yet seem like a place with ‘regulars’. Eating here is not the main event, but it can be done.  Corner of West Broadway & Chambers in Tribeca.

Perhaps one of the best – if not the best – place to dine at the bar in lower Manhattan. Bar dining at the Odeon has been going on since the façade adorned the cover of Bright Lights Big City (in the ’80’s). Get a seat on a blood-red padded stool, ask for a menu and very soon a triangle of white linen will appear before you on the dark wood bar.   Look up at angled mirrors to spy the restaurant behind you. Look either way down the bar, and see fellow diners, after-workers, Tribeca locals & tourists in for a drink. The food is outstanding but a bit overpriced. Even though the bar crowd ebbs and flows as diner tables become available, you’ll feel special here. The bar staff is nothing but pro – unflappable, gracious, consistent. And the restaurant itself has flair, style and roots – there is nothing trendy about it. The prices keep the crowd over 30.  Dinner at the Odeon bar is usually pitch perfect:  whether you want to be alone among people, or engaged in light conversation.

Billed as a wine bar, Terroir is much more than that. The outstanding food here is prepared in a very small kitchen at the far end of the bar – read about it in the entertaining steel-covered menu. More than bar snacks, less than a full dinner, you can definitely have great food at Terroir (rich ribolita, towering bruschetta, a decent little bar steak (thin-cut/salt), incredible meatball sandwich and much more). The bar staff are all basically sommeliers – young men and women, full of character and knowledge – expect tattoos, smiles and focus. Terroir also features a tightly edited selection of craft beers. Only downside for some can be the din of enthusiasm from fellow patrons. Hit this place around dinner-time late in the work week and the shrill-factor is bananas.   Expect to dine with after-work ad agency folks, antique store staffers, gangs of finance folks, first-daters, and Tribeca locals in to meet a friend.

Rick’s Casablanca is alive and well at on the corner of Bowery & Houston. Cherche Midi is French/American (homage to Odeon), boisterous and intriguing – a silver-haired character from Mad Men orders martinis from the scrum behind the lucky few diners at the bar. Seats do clear as reservations rotate. And when your does, meet Francois (goateed French barkeep) and watch who spills in through the industrial front doors. Lit like a jewel, open kitchen full of pros, bar staff of French men like the start of your next story – you won’t be bored here.   The food is modern French  – that is to say, excellent though a little heavy.

To get a bar seat at Dirty French is a stroke of luck (or a credit to your patience). Food: fantastic, rich and wonderful. Fellow bar-diners: foodies and travellers. Environment: lots of red, boisterous/lively. Bar staff is pro. Always 2: a busy but hard listening expert, and it being “French”, an watchful bar-back in a lovely black dress. The food is superb and surprising. Meat, normally grilled is cooked by rotisserie – a preparation that is better experienced than described. More health-forward eaters will definitely find satisfying options as well. The comings and goings off Ludlow Street are brisk and interesting. Blind-daters one minute, Ken Burns the next.   If you drop by this place, and the bar seats are full, be sure to ask the bartender the estimated wait, and take him/her for their word.

This place is full of  Lower East Side millennials, young parents in knit lids, muscled nice guys, and pretty people. The bar in the back (facing the kitchen) is topped with a Manga-meets-Tarantino how-to-eat-Ramen fresco. Old or young, you won’t be out of place here. A suit is not recommended, though if you must no one here will care but you.  You may see a stroller (well-behaved infants may be around). Everyone at the bar is eating. And like the manga on the wall, there is someone waiting for your seat at the bar, so you won’t want to linger. Watch, Order, Watch, Eat and Leave. There is not a lot of spontaneous conversation with fellow diners.  Bar staff (more a reference to where a waiter is stationed) is super solid and friendly. If you’re a first time visitor, go with what they recommend, including a little can of cold sake if you like that sort of thing.

This is a great steak placed adjacent to and owned by what is widely considered to be the best beer bar in NYC. For me, that’s pretty close to heaven.  The 2-hour wait for a table – the average after a few visits – is best spent with a friend next door at Spayten Dayvel (beer garden in Williamsburg). Once seated at the San Anselm bar (everyone at the bar is there to eat), much of the action is from an intense duo of tattooed maidens slinging “ax handle” steaks and everything else that crosses the grill for the entire restaurant. They know what they are doing, and it is fascinating to watch.  Fish, meat, and veggies pass over those flames with nothing much between. The food is superbly tasty, simple and reasonable.  It takes an evening, but you will remember it your whole life.