Schiller's Liquor Bar

(Warning: this posting assumes a pretty detailed knowledge of bars and restaurants on New York's Lower East Side. If you don't either live here or frequently visit Below 14th, large chunks of it might well make very little sense.)

Keith ventures where Brian failed. The opening of Schiller's Liquor Bar marks the second attempted McNally assault on the Lower East Side. The first was Brian's Smith, on First Street, which closed ignominiously not long after opening. It was replaced by Starfoods, which replaced the glitz with grot and was rewarded with enormous popularity. Keith seems to have learned his lesson: he's set the bar for Schiller's extremely low. Main courses hover around the $15 level, and the wine is cheap, in tumblers. You can order Cheap, Decent or Good: $4, $5 and $6 a glass respectively, or $12, $15 and $17 a carafe.

Schiller's website does the ironic slumming thing: it calls Keith McNally a "beauty salon expert" and proclaims itself a "low life bar and restaurant". Evidently, low life includes the likes of Anna Wintour and Nicole Kidman, both of whom were spotted there in its first week. And there's nothing low life about the space, a gorgeous former pharmacy on Rivington Street which has been decked out in trademark McNally mirrors and tiles. Anybody who likes the front room at Pastis will feel immediately at home here.

The menu, however, is almost aggressively unambitious. McNally might be attempting a move away from the French bistro feel of Balthazar or Lucky Strike, but he's replaced it with nothing: the only interesting things on the list are the rotating daily specials, which the kitchen hasn't got around to actually cooking yet. ("We've only been open for a week," apologises the cute and friendly waitress.) The choice at Schiller's is basically what you'd expect on a post-midnight bar menu anywhere else: burgers, steak frites, a toasted cheese sandwich. Um, sorry, a Welsh Rarebit. See? It's not a French bistro: if it were, it would offer a croque monsieur instead.

All of these things are done very well: after setting the bar low, McNally then clears it with oodles of room to spare. But beyond the initial rush of gawkers coming to check out the hot new restaurant, there's nothing to bring anybody from outside the neighborhood back for a return visit. Unless you live here, the Lower East Side is on nobody's way anywhere, and the number of nightlife options you might want to try out before or afterwards is definitely limited compared to what's available in, say, a three-block radius of Pasits. Personally, I'm over the moon that there's a local place to get an excellent burger at 2am, but that's not the sort of thing which is going to turn the corner of Norfolk and Rivington into the hot new buzzy spot.

McNally's made a mistake with the exterior design of the restaurant, which sits on the ground floor of one of the grottier Lower East Side tenement buildings. Schiller's sister restaurants, even when they opened, had a feeling that they'd been there for years: the antiqued mirrors, the old-fashioned menu items, the way they largely blended into their surroundings gave the spaces the feel of the comfy leather armchairs at Pravda. There's a timeless quality to somewhere like Lucky Strike: it really could have been opened at any time in the last 60 years.

With Schiller's, however, McNally has tarted up the tenement out of all recognition, plastering the outside in white subway tile and slapping on a couple of extremely bright neon signs. They're not cute retro neon like at Odeon, either: they're in-your-face shine-all-the-way-to-Houston-Street neon of an intensity utterly unprecedented on the Lower East Side. Katz's this place ain't.

Inside, on the other hand, Schiller's is a warm and friendly place to sit in, and will become even more so if and when the weather ever clears up, the French doors get pulled back and the restaurant starts spilling out on to the pavement. The newspaper racks already feature the requisite European imports, and I'm sure that Schiller's will be a welcome addition to such places as Cafe Lebowitz, Teany and Paul's Boutique for those of us looking for a pleasant place to while away a large chunk of afternoon with a coffee and maybe a friend. I certainly didn't feel rushed in the slightest as I sat at a corner table working my way through a seemingly endless Philip Gourevitch piece on North Korea in the New Yorker. Schiller's is not a huge restaurant in the way that Balthazar is, and the way the tables are curved around the bar means that even when you're the only diner in the place you feel cozy rather than alone.

As for the evening crowd, I'm pretty sure that Schiller's is going to be a bar first and restaurant second, rather like Salt Bar or Essex – or Pravda, for that matter. The small tables are perfect for small groups meeting up for drinks, the bar is well stocked, and if people fancy some garlic shrimp with their cocktails they can always order it.

My guess is that Schiller's is not going to do all that much for Rivington Street, but that it's going to do wonders for Norfolk. The block between Rivington and Delancey now has Schiller's, Tonic and Lansky Lounge, and is going to get another restaurant very soon. Luise, the grotty coffee shop opposite Schiller's, has already revamped itself into something cool and sleek, and there's another excellent coffee place a few doors down the street on the east side. With WD-50 already feeling stale, I have a feeling that Norfolk is going to be the new Clinton. And for those of us who like to sit quietly in the back garden of 1492, that's no bad thing at all.

Posted by Felix at 2:02 EST

Comments

The big question though, is 151 still going to be relaxed and chill on a Saturday night as the big names get closer and closer?

Posted by: Abe at 12:38 EST, September 04, 2003

This is making me homesick. I want to sit there and read the New Yorker for hours.

Posted by: Stefan Geens at 16:24 EST, September 04, 2003

schiller's has got it all. i am a native nyer....have been to them all. nothing compares to this place. i don't want to go anywhere else. why should i? food that you can never tire of. warm ambience. friendly, kind, and very handsome staff esp. bartender. no pretenses.

Posted by: les girl at 11:56 EST, February 21, 2004

did i mention the incredibly handsome bartender? reason enough to go there over and over.

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Posted by: Pharmacy at 1:33 EST, July 28, 2008