Holiday Cocktail Lounge has stood at 75 St. Mark's Place since the 1960s. Hungarian owner Stefan Lutak ran it as a literary dive for fifty years — W. H. Auden was a regular, Allen Ginsberg drank there, and the New Yorker's Roger Angell wrote about the place. After Lutak died in 2012 the bar closed; in 2016 it reopened with the original bar back and tile floor intact, plus a new classic cocktail programme overseen by former Mayahuel and Death & Co alumni.
It is the right bar for anyone who wants to drink a properly built Old Fashioned in a room that still smells faintly of forty years of bar towels. It is the wrong bar for anyone who needs the trappings of a modern speakeasy — there is no menu theatre, no dress code, no curated soundtrack. The New York Times Eat & Drink section's 2017 reopening review described the renovation as 'reverent.'
One long room with a curved wooden bar, three booths, and a back wall papered in vintage liquor ads. The Lutak-era 'No Standing' sign still hangs by the door. The Eater New York reopening piece noted the new owners refused to add bar mats or a back-lit display, which is why the space still feels like a 1970s dive rather than a 2010s revival.
Order an Old Fashioned ($15) or the house Hungarian Sour ($16, Tokaji, lemon, honey, egg white) — a nod to the Lutak family. Both are built classically with no garnish theatrics. Skip anything labelled 'signature seasonal'; regulars on r/AskNYC say the rotating list is uneven and the menu is best when stripped back. Bottle beer is $7, well drinks $11, which is rare on St. Mark's.
Older East Village holdouts and NYU graduate students on weeknights; weekend nights pull in cocktail tourists who have read the Eater write-up. Time Out New York's most recent update noted the bar 'has held its character better than any other St. Mark's revival.'
Holiday Cocktail Lounge's reopening coverage in the New York Times (2017); Eater New York; Time Out New York; The New Yorker (Lutak-era profiles); r/AskNYC; Google Maps reviews (n=1,100+).