Beer bars score high in Voice’s Best of NYC

The Village Voice’s annual Best of New York issue came out this past week, and quite a few accolades were bestowed upon New York’s craft beer bar scene. Here’s some of the big winners that serve up good beer and a good vibe:

BEST HAPPY HOUR
Drop-Off Service (211 Avenue A, at 13th St., East Village)

Says the Voice:

The two most important things in judging a happy hour are the length of that “hour” and the price of the happy. Drop-Off Service serves on both counts, with a daily happy hour that spans from opening until 8 p.m., featuring $3 imperial (20 ounces, meaning large) pints. Which is a lot of happy.

We can’t say we disagree! And with quality beers on tap from Stone, Chelsea, and Peak Organic, it’s especially hard for a beer geek to say no to this happy hour.

BEST PLACE TO GET DRUNK INSIDE A GONDOLA
The Diamond (43 Franklin St., at Calyer St., Greenpoint)

Says the Voice:

The Diamond in Greenpoint is one of Brooklyn’s best neighborhood bars. What we think really makes this place excellent, in addition to the fact that you can find a seat most nights, is the backyard’s gondola lift on loan from the Adirondacks. Not only is the four-seater awesome patio furniture, but it also makes a great hotbox.

We’re bummed that the Voice gave away the big secret (even they say “please use this information wisely”), but The Diamond is - pardon the pun - a hidden gem. Its eight hard-working tap lines, occasional beer events, and obsession with session beers is worth seeking out. The gondola, honestly, is just an added bonus.

BEST BAR WITH SNACKS
Jimmy’s No. 43 (43 E. 7th St., at 2nd Ave., East Village)

Says the Voice:

To call the food “snacks” minimizes the reality—there’s a full blue-plate special on Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays that will run you just $15 with a pint, plus oysters, burgers, shrimp and grits, and mussels. But there are bona fide snacks, too, including addictive spiced candy walnuts, mini skillet-fried beer sausages with Dijon mustard, blistered, salty shishito peppers that were once described to us by a waitress as “like popcorn” (they are!), and the requisite cheese plate.

What can we say? The beer sausages might be our favorite beer bar plate in the entire city. And those peppers and candied nuts are equally as addictive. A fine choice - although it needs to be reiterated that Jimmy’s full meals are just as worthy of praise.

BEST PLACE TO GET HAMMERED AND EAT A MAN
Barcade (388 Union Ave., at Ainslie St., Williamsburg)

Says the Voice:

Barcade is stocked with ’80s arcade classics: Tapper, Galaga, Q*Bert, Dig Dug, Paperboy, even Punch-Out. But our personal favorite is Rampage, a 1986 Bally-Midway video game in which players embody man-eating monsters who punch buildings while trying to survive military counterattacks. Even better than the taste of a video-game soldier? The endlessly rotating drink-menu of American craft beers. Just thinking about it—burp.

I got a little confused as to where this “best of” award was going. Eat a man?! Yikes. I never took Barcade’s clientele for cannibals. But they’ve still got it! Seven years strong, and with two new locations this year, Barcade’s original is still winning accolades. And they deserve it.

BEST SPORTS BAR
Standings (43 E. 7th St., at 2nd Ave., East Village)

Says the Voice:

Our pick this year is really more of a cozy pub—pretty much the opposite of the late, lamented ESPN Zone. Woody and comfortable, Standings could be called a sports nook. And a fine little nook it is, with a good selection of draught beers, several game choices, and a minimum of aggressive frat-boy backslapping. Blessedly.

Two wins on the same block! Just upstairs from Jimmy’s is our favorite sports bar, and it’s been a well-kept secret that the combination of eight TVs and 10 rotating craft beers on tap makes this place, as the sign outside says, “Beer and Sports Nirvana.”

BEST BEER SELECTION
4th Avenue Pub (76 4th Ave., at Bergen St., Boerum Hill)

Says the Voice:

The beer selection is fantastic. From a shifting roster, which you can examine online before you go, you can grab a 25-ounce bottle of Saint Somewhere’s Lectio Divina, a lively Saison from a Tarpon Springs, Florida, brewery, priced at $4 less than at another of our faves. Or go for the amazing selection of draft beers, from which you might choose, say, a Troeg Dead Reckoning Porter if the weather’s cold outside, or a Laughing Dog Crouch Sniffing Bastard if it’s a bit warmer.

The spelling mistakes didn’t stop them from making a bold pronouncement. And odd that they would cite a bottled beer before remarking on their 25 beers on tap - one of the largest (and most well-priced) selections in Brooklyn. But whatever… we’re happy with this pick. It’s often overlooked that upper Fourth Avenue - with this spot, Pacific Standard, Cherry Tree, and Mission Dolores - is an embarrassment of craft beer riches. Perhaps it won’t be overlooked as much now.

BEST BREWPUB
Heartland Brewery (multiple locations)

Says the Voice:

Manhattan is not the best place in the world to find a brew pub—and that’s an understatement. For one thing, the city is rich in locavoric beers, natives have good taste in beer (and hence the typical brewpub is off limits, since the homemade beer usually sucks), and the bon vivants of this town insist upon a range of exotic beers far broader than any damn brewpub could produce. That said, the Heartland Brewery located at the South Street Seaport is not too shabby, and it’s got barbecue, too!

Huh? Now, hold on a second. First, enough with the self-hatred of New York’s beer scene, VV. We get it - because space is at an expensive premium here, there aren’t too many of them. But Heartland’s beers are produced by the same brewer in the same brewery that makes that “locavoric” Kelso of Brooklyn. And with two new brewpubs just opening in the last four months (508 Gastrobrewery and Birreria at Eataly), New York’s brewpub scene has doubled in size this year.

Now, time to go out and celebrate these wins by visiting all these spots… just not all at once.