Bring your own dumplings to a World Cup bar
The Knicks were down double digits at halftime of Game Four, the bar had started to clear out and blue and orange fans were saying prayers to all 74 inches of Jalen Brunson. If you were at Super Burrito in the West Village, you saw me white-knuckling a California burrito — nothing like the ones found in San Antonio — with carne asada, French fries and sour cream. No, us Knicks fans weren’t nervous for a second. It’s a good time to be a sports fan. The best time, probably, since I moved to the city eight years ago. You can catch a game at your bodega or public park thanks to watch parties across the city, and restaurants have jumped on the bandwagon, squeezing new T.V.s and projectors wherever they can. More than once, I’ve stopped for lunch somewhere and stayed for a full World Cup match. Good luck to all of your home teams. If you’ll excuse me, I’m headed to one of these bars.
Wings in a dive, Knicks in fiveThe Wingbar wasn’t always a sports bar. It started in 2009 as a post-recession, punk dive bar with wings and two muted televisions, said Brian Bisbano, a co-owner and former bassist in the indie rock outfit the Dardys. Over the years, each time a New York sports team went to the playoffs, finals or Super Bowl, the screens multiplied. Today the T.V.s — I counted seven, but you may find more — follow you around the room like the steady gaze of the Mona Lisa. The wings have grown, too, from orders of 10, 20 and 50 when the Wingbar first opened to heaps of 100 wings sold as drums or flats only, if you prefer, in varying spice levels. The classic hot is right for me, made with more Frank’s RedHot than butter and spices that are closely guarded by the owner’s family. (I taste Worcestershire sauce.) What’s in the extra hot wings? “I don’t even know,” Mr. Bisbano said. “It’s our cook’s recipe. When he’s making them, I won’t go anywhere near the kitchen.” 275 Smith Street (Degraw Street), Cobble Hill
They’re off to the races …What’s a Norwegian flag doing in an Irish pub in Sunset Park’s Chinatown? “It’s been a bar continuously since 1929,” said Brendan Farley, a bartender at Soccer Tavern for the last four decades who now owns the place. The bar predates the local Chinatown by several decades, arriving when Eighth Avenue was known to many Norwegians as Lapskaus Boulevard. Whether in Little Norway or Chinatown, everyone needs a pub. For watching the Premier League, sure, but also to watch the horse races, the unofficial sport of Soccer Tavern. One screen is always set to the tracks, with a group of locals hunkered over the back tables, closely monitoring the odds. Almost everyone else is there to watch soccer, displayed on televisions and audible from the sidewalk. (You’d hardly notice the TouchTunes machine by the door.) Halftime is a good opportunity to stock up on xiao long bao from Mr. Duck, peanut noodles from He Yi Xiaochi and other local dim sum, since Soccer Tavern is B.Y.O.D., as in dumplings. And they say Guinness is for fish and chips … 6004 8th Avenue (60th Street), Sunset Park
Can I interest you in a grill?Maybe you don’t want a bar full of jersied, jockeying fans. Maybe what you want is a low-set television and seven ounces of martini — eight if you count the meniscus — poured by a bartender who has been employed there since the Knicks last won a ring. This is what you’ll get at Wollensky’s Grill in Midtown, a white-tablecloth saloon next door to the steakhouse, Smith & Wollensky. The owners will almost certainly shudder when they hear their 46-year-old saloon is being called a sports bar. Still, there’s no beating the allegations with televisions stationed at both ends of the bar and flexible hours — 11:30 a.m. to 1 a.m. daily — that accommodate games in Dallas, Guadalajara and Toronto. Plus, there’s the meat: steaks and burgers, but also prime rib carved into Flinstonian slabs or built into glistening sandwiches. I side with Pete Wells that its best use is in prime rib hash, a retro platter of burnished meat, cubed potatoes and wobbly poached eggs. Call it a breakfast of champions. 201 East 49th Street (Third Avenue), Midtown Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Have New York City restaurant questions? Send us a note here. Need to know where to eat across the United States? Check out our guides to Atlanta, Austin Boston, Chicago, D.C., Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Portland, Ore., San Francisco and Seattle.
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