Michelin-Starred Chef Tackles Bar Food in East Village Starting Next Week

From the vegetable-obsessed chef behind Michelin-starred Dovetail, John Fraser is opening a casual bar with booze-friendly foods like onion rings, a burger, and his version of the Georgian cheesy bread, khachapuri.

Named for his East Village American restaurant Narcissa, Narcbar isn’t in a new space, but a remodeled portion of that restaurant in The Standard, East Village (25 Cooper Square), the hotel that worked with Fraser on the restaurant. (“Narc bar” also happens to be slang for edible weed products.) The 60-seat spot opens onto the street and it’s intended to be more of a bar with a lot of food than a traditional sit-down restaurant. Fraser says that the hotel always planned to open a bar as well as an option in-between Narcissa and the casual cafe next door.

The menu (shown below) is divided into “bites” versus “bigger bites,” with costs ranging from $9 to $18 for the former and $12 to $20 for the latter. Besides Fraser’s version of typical American bar foods, Narcbar also features dishes like ceviche with coconut milk and cucumbers soaked in chili oil.

“A lot of the food is eating with your hands,” the chef says. “It’s also about sharing and communality, at the table, being able to pass things around, in the style of drinking and sharing.”

Tonia Guffey, formerly of Dram in Brooklyn, made the cocktail and drink menu, and Natasha Torres, also a Dram alum, will be the head bartender — serving both draft cocktails like an old-fashioned with root beer syrup along with made-to-order drinks like “Heavenly Charm,” a version of a pisco sour with cantaloupe juice and orgeat. With a front door patio and a location ripe for people watching, Guffy says she wanted the drinks to feel summery and bright. The full menu is below.

Narcbar opens next Thursday, July 6.

The Standard