Oh, you can order your usual mixed drink at Milk & Honey. But why would you? It’d be like having Superman stop by to winterize your living room windows. He’d do it because he’s a nice guy from the Midwest. He wouldn’t even need to use a hair dryer on the heat-shrink plastic film; he’d just exhale a gale of hot air. But this is a guy who can fly. He can lift a city bus. He can turn back time by reversing the Earth’s rotation. He can outfox Gene Hackman, you fool, and here you have him, in your living room, weatherproofing.
All of New York’s contemporary swanky bars, with their varying degrees of exclusivity and at least one from the same father (Sasha Petraske, who also owns Little Branch), are descendants of Milk & Honey. It’s one of the originals if not the original cocktail speakeasy. It has an unlisted number for reservations that’s rumored to change often. It’s passed down selectively by the city’s bon vivants.
Out front on a grubby Lower East Side side-street lies a heavy steel security door marked with those adhesive metal characters one uses to label a mailbox, spelling “M & H.” There’s no secret knock or password but you have to hit the buzzer, get observed by the security camera and, in our case at least, stand in the rain for a few pregnant minutes before you’re let in. Just inside, through the curtain, there’s a tiny bar with four seats; in the back are three booths for four. The place is smaller than my apartment and lit only by candles on sconces that throw dim light on the tin ceilings and walls. House rules forbid hats, loudness and egregious attempts at pick-ups. A sign in the women’s room lists more no-no’s, including “starfucking.” The credo in the men’s room, above the stack of individually folded linen hand towels, notes that a true gentleman remains so even when drinking.
To order, there are no menus. The server, dressed in nouveau flapper garb, asks what you like. Which kinds of liquor warm you with fondness and which disagree with you? What tastes do you favor? Pepperiness, sweetness, boldness, creaminess, spiciness, saltiness, bitterness? Have a favorite fruit? Say it. (Although apricot stumped ’em.)
What you get is ultimately the bartender’s choice. The four of us ordered three cocktails each without any repeats. We progressed through a wild array of styles and glasses. I started with a festive nutmeg-topped nog made with an egg and rye (or was that rum?). Next was a strawberry Collins, too fruity and carbonated for my taste, a dentist’s-mirror-like steel stirrer-spoon leaning inside the tall glass. Last was a blended Greenpoint, stiff yet smooth with rye, yellow chartreuse, orange bitters and a lemon twist. Other craziness at the table included a drink festooned with more fruit than Carmen Miranda’s hat, a blackberry cobbler, a bramble, a Harvard, and a “breakfast cocktail” made with gin, lemon juice and orange marmalade, which was offered as a substitute for the apricot deficiency.