Eel Bar
Potato salad under a glitter of trout roe, piquillo peppers packed with cold crab, and an anchovy-draped burger, on a standing ledge off Broome Street.
Why go
The team already runs Cervo's, Hart's and The Fly, and The Infatuation reads this as the fourth in a set of highly specific, highly satisfying restaurants.
The format, in the same review: More than a bar, and somewhat less than a full-fledged restaurant, Eel Bar feels like a tavern.
That means a green bar that usually takes walk-ins, a standing ledge Willa Moore sizes at a plate of gildas and a Filthy Martini,
and wooden booths in the back for people who intend to stay several hours. The cooking runs Basque and Spanish through olive oil, and everything is built to be shared.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the potato salad first, "a hunk of potato salad glittering with trout roe," then the piquillo peppers of cold crab, which Moore says taste "like tuna salad that won the lottery." Fried mussels, black rice through aioli, the burger between four people, and the vermouth-drowned sponge cake at the end. Drink vermouth with rum and olives, or a Basque white.
- Avoid: ordering it like a three-course dinner. The plates arrive small and keep coming.
What locals & experts say
- The Infatuation (10 October 2024, 8.6): on the mussels,
a fried mussel so shatteringly crisp that your mind will wander back to them every time you eat a potato chip.
1 - The Infatuation, on the burger:
the city's funkiest, anchovy-draped burger,
eaten hunched over the bar.1
Good to know
- Timing: evenings and late, and the bar usually has room for a walk-in.
- Booking: book if you want a booth for a long sitting.
Jeff's take (his words)
- Order: Potato and trout caviar
- Note: Potato and trout caviar. Nyt dish 2024, multiple recs
Verdict
should-visit — The fourth room from the team behind Cervo's, Hart's and The Fly, and the one built to be eaten at sideways: a green bar with walk-in space, a standing ledge sized for gildas and a martini, and a back room for a long run of small plates. Willa Moore rates it 8.6 and her dish writing is the reason to trust it, from potato salad glittering with trout roe to piquillo peppers of cold crab that taste 'like tuna salad that won the lottery' to a fried mussel so crisp it spoils potato chips afterward. The burger comes draped in anchovies and the table shares it. Jeff wrote down the potato and the roe, which is the correct opening order. It stops short of the top rung because there is one published verdict on it and his award claim for it did not check out.