Milady’s in Soho Revived as a Cocktail Bar
BY Emma Orlow / Eater NY
Cocktail powerhouse Julie Reiner is at the helm of the revived Soho institution.
Cocktail Bar Illustration and Logo Design by Creature Theory
Excerpts (link to full story below):
Decades-oldDecades-old dive bar Milady’s is being revived this week as a cocktail bar at its former home at 160 Prince Street, at Thompson Street. The Soho spot once known for its cheap beer and pool table closed in 2014 and will open its doors on Wednesday, October 19 under the reins of Julie Reiner, behind Brooklyn bars Leyenda and Clover Club.
Milady’s will be a grand return to Manhattan for Reiner, who was a former partner in the since-shuttered Flatiron Lounge and Pegu Club. “It was called Milady’s, how do we not reopen it... we are the ladies!” she says. At Milady’s, she teamed up with her partners at Leyenda and Clover Club, Christine Williams, and Susan Fedroff, as well as Sam Sherman, who runs the kitchen at Clover Club and will serve as a partner and executive chef at Milady’s.
The question is this: In a Carbone-ified Soho, how does a star cocktail team revive a neighborhood watering hole that meant a lot to a cast of characters?
To start, Reiner put some of her cocktail historian friends on the case to help her uncover more about the legacy of Milady’s — which proved harder to find in city records than she anticipated. For one, it is not exactly clear when the bar first opened and the name itself has muddled origins. In 2014, Jeremiah Moss wrote in his blog Vanishing New York, “Zagat says it’s been there for 81 years. Others say since 1947 or sometime in the 1950s. Either way, Milady’s has been around for a long time. And now it’s gone.” But what is clear, as Moss went on to write, is that the “funeral party” was so packed that the bar, allegedly, ran out of beer on closing night — the team had to grab bottles from a nearby deli. This is to say Reiner is aware that the fandom for Milady’s runs deep and some might have an opinion about it no longer being a dive.
“I used to go to Milady’s in the late ‘90s, it was a nostalgic sort of place, so I wanted to make sure there were throwbacks from that time frame,” she says of the menu she developed with beverage director Natasha Mesa, that’s giving major Sex and the City energy.
Cocktail Bar Logo Design and Illustration by Creature Theory
“Milady’s was always a fun place to go... we wanted to make sure the dive side really is full of the things you’d expect at a dive, they’re nostalgic for people,” says Reiner.
As for the design overhaul of the now-68-seat room, Reiner says, “when you talk to people who went to Milady’s the number one question is ‘are you going to have the pool table?’ which is really funny,” she says. But with the cost of doing business in Soho in 2022, “a pool table takes up a larger amount of space and isn’t feasible to keep it,” she says, adding that she wanted to have an homage to it with a pool table-inspired wall installation while being able to gain back those extra seats.
Milady’s will be open Monday through Thursday 12 p.m. to 12 a.m., Fridays noon until 2 a.m., Saturdays 11 a.m. until 2 a.m., and Sundays, 11 a.m. until 12 a.m.
Link to full Article:
https://ny.eater.com/2022/10/17/23365226/miladys-opening-soho-julie-reiner
Milady’s, One of SoHo’s Last Dive Bars, Is Reborn With Craft Cocktails
By Robert Simonson/ The New York Times
Julie Reiner, who was a partner in the now-closed Flatiron Lounge and Pegu Club, will open version 2.0 of the beloved bar in September.
Julie Reiner, who has long been a force in the New York cocktail world, will once again be mixing manhattans in Manhattan.
She was one of the partners behind the now-closed Flatiron Lounge and Pegu Club, two of the most important bars in the early days of the craft cocktail movement in New York, and has since focused on her Brooklyn bars, Clover Club and Leyenda.
This September, Ms. Reiner will return to her old territory to open Milady’s at the corner of Prince and Thompson Streets in SoHo.
It’s a second coming of sorts for Milady’s, a down-to-earth bar that operated in this space with little fanfare for decades and closed in 2014. It was cherished as one of the last old-school, affordable watering holes left in the neighborhood. (Bruce Springsteen was even known to drop in.)
“I wasn’t looking to open another bar, but this opportunity kind of fell in my lap,” said Ms. Reiner, whose partners at Milady’s include Christine Williams and Susan Fedroff, both part of the Clover Club and Leyenda teams. “I thought, how do we not reopen Milady’s? We are the Miladies!”
Link to full Article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/18/dining/miladys-bar-julie-reiner.html?searchResultPosition=1
