Boilermaker opened on First Avenue in 2013 as a project from Greg Boehm, the founder of Cocktail Kingdom and the operator behind Mace, Existing Conditions, and Katana Kitten. The room runs a deliberately unfussy programme: the menu is built around the boilermaker — a shot and a beer ordered as a pair — with a small list of riff cocktails that lean on whiskey, mezcal, and amaro.
The format is the point. Twenty curated pairings cost $12 each, the staff is asked to make a recommendation in under thirty seconds, and the room is built to keep the volume down to a working conversation. The bar is the opposite of the East Village's more theatrical speakeasies; it functions as the neighbourhood's industry shift-end room and a reliable walk-in option when the Death and Co door is two-deep.
Long, narrow, lit dimly with industrial fixtures and lined with reclaimed wood. A six-seat bar at the front, banquettes down the side, and a back room that opens up on weekends. PUNCH's 2018 East Village bar guide called the design "deliberately anti-speakeasy," which is accurate — there is no doorbell, no password, and the menu is on a card not a velum scroll.
Order a boilermaker pairing ($12). The High West Double Rye with a Notch Session pilsner is the bar's most-recommended combination per Google reviews and a 2022 Eater NY guide to East Village late nights. The Smoked Sazerac variant ($14) is the cocktail to try; it uses Laphroaig 10 as the float and is the only build the bar has kept on the menu since 2014. Skip the wine list — the bar's strength is shots and pints and the wine is an afterthought, per repeated r/AskNYC complaints.
The pre-10pm crowd is East Village locals; after midnight the room shifts to bartenders ending shifts at Death and Co, Mace, and the surrounding cocktail bars. Eater NY listed it in 2023 among the city's top three industry late-night rooms.