Attaboy occupies the old Milk & Honey room at 134 Eldridge Street — the address where Sasha Petraske rewrote modern bartending — and Sam Ross and Michael McIlroy have kept its discipline alive since 2013: no menu, no sign, ring the bell and tell the bartender what you feel like.
The pitch is simple: this is the most reliable bespoke drinking in America. Name a spirit, a direction — citrusy, spirit-forward, smoky — and the drink that comes back is built on classical specifications by people who helped write them. Ross created the Penicillin and the Paper Plane; both were born of exactly this kind of improvisation. Who would hate it? Anyone who wants a leather-bound list to deliberate over — there isn't one, and the room is too small for deliberating anyway.
The room: a narrow strip of marble bar, tin ceiling and dim pendant light, holding maybe thirty people when it's full, which is most nights after eight. Regulars on r/AskNYC consistently give the same advice: go at opening or go very late.
The drinks run roughly the price of the neighbourhood's printed-menu rooms — high teens to low twenties — and arrive fast for handmade work. Start with your honest preference rather than a remembered classic; the bartenders do their best work off a feeling, not a spec sheet.
The crowd is visiting bartenders, cocktail-literate locals, and the occasional baffled walk-in who lucked through the door. Tuesday to Thursday is conversational; weekends queue. Pair it with Death & Company across the neighbourhood line for the definitive LES-to-East-Village cocktail evening.
