Enjoy a Drink at the World’s Best Cocktail Bar
My spouse and I
visited the Dead Rabbit Grocery and Grog for drinks on a Tuesday evening in
late January 2018. The pub is open daily from 11:00 am until 4:00 am. Live
music, DJs, and special event nights (with deals on oysters, pot pies, and
prime rib roast) are offered on certain evenings. The Dead Rabbit has held the
honor of being one of the world’s best bars for several years running, even
being named number 1 in 2016! It hold other awards including “World's Best
Cocktail Menu”, “Best American Cocktail Bar”, and “International Bartender of
the Year”. The owners of Dead Rabbit also operate Manhattan’s BlackTail
(with a Cuban bar Prohibition theme).
The “Dead Rabbits” was the name of a
reputed Irish American criminal street gang in Lower Manhattan in the 1850s.
The group was so called because they supposedly carried a dead rabbit on a spear
and were said to throw a dead rabbit in the middle of a fight before it began.
The Dead Rabbits were sometimes called the "Mulberry Street Boys" because of the street where they
operated in the Five Points area. For more than a decade, "Dead Rabbit”
became the standard phrase by which city residents described any scandalously
riotous individual or group.
Today, the Dead Rabbit is a modern Irish bar with a young
hip staff that serves great cocktails, amazing whiskey, and good food. It offers
several places to drink and dine. An informal long and narrow ground-floor pub/taproom
is cozy and comfortable. The second floor houses the more exclusive main
drinking/dining parlor, while the top floor offers a private function room that
hold about 60 people. Old photographs, sports memorabilia, and
some Civil War mementos decorate the walls.
We only visited the street-level taproom for a round of
cocktails before moving on to a nearby restaurant for dinner, but next time, we
plan to stay longer and request a table upstairs.
