Death & Co East Village
The brown, bitter and stirred style most New York bars still pour was born in this room, on PUNCH's account. It opened on New Year's Eve 2006.
Why go
The owners, David Kaplan and Ravi DeRossi, handed the drinks to their bartenders and stayed out of it, and a number of that first crew came over from Audrey Saunders's Pegu Club in SoHo: Phil Ward, Brian Miller, Jim Kearns. Their list grew to book length, bars across the country copied the format, and the team then cut it back to around thirty choices. Attaboy, the bar the original Milk & Honey became in 2013, still pours with no menu at all (PUNCH). The kitchen works to the drinks, so plates come out one at a time and you are never eating against a clock (The Infatuation).
Order this / avoid
- Order: something stirred. That is the style this room set, and it is what the bartenders here have been judged on for nearly twenty years.
- Order: food alongside, and let the kitchen pace it.
- Avoid: arriving with more than ten people. Above that the house treats it as a private event and you fill in a form.
What locals & experts say
- PUNCH (20 September 2016):
The modern New York cocktail aesthetic of brown, bitter and stirred—still the most prevalent style practiced today—was born at Death & Co.
1 - PUNCH, in the same 2016 piece, found the list cut back to around thirty choices and still hard to choose from.1
- PUNCH's venue file (18 November 2014) rates it one of the most reliable places to get an ambitious drink.2
Good to know
- Timing: evenings and late.
- Booking: walk-ins are first come, first served for parties up to eight, and a limited number of tables are bookable. Seven to ten is arranged separately.
- The gap: I have not found a recent review of the drinking, so this page stands on the room's record and not on tonight's list.
Verdict
should-visit — Take a bar seat and give it two drinks before you make up your mind.