A Gatsby Glub
Pegu Club
77 w. Houston St., 2nd Floor (West Broadway)
212-473-7348
These are sad times to be a plastic cup of crappy liquor. From East Side Company to Employees Only, a growing breed of bars are eschewing rotgut booze. They're crafting painstakingly prepared cocktails in softly lit atmospheres emphasizing conversation, not 50 Cent's "Candy Shop." Such top-shelf concoctions are worth the occasional splurge, mostly to remind taste buds that liquor can be delicious, not medicine for soul-deadening jobs. The latest refresher is found at Pegu Club, a discreet lounge on West Houston Street.
Walk inside-inhaling the fresh wood scent-and traipse to the second floor. It's a big, bowling alley of a room with hand-carved wooden tables (to match the bar, the sink and just about everything else), Japanese paper lamps and murmur-level background music. The decor is elegant without being ostentatious, as is the crowd of quietly conversing couples and well-dressed, childless friends.
Pegu Club employs a refreshing first-come, first-served door policy. On a recent weeknight, a willowy hostess glides my sandal-wearing party to a table-not near kitchen or bathroom purgatory, thank you. We open the menus, revisiting a gin-ruled age of consumption. From the signature Pegu Club Cocktail (lime juice, gin and several bitters, originally served at Rangoon's real-life Pegu Club) to the Fitty-Fitty (half gin and vermouth), the libations are fit for a Gatsby. They come courtesy of Audrey Saunders, a mixologist from Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle Hotel and the protégé of Dale "King of Cocktails" DeGroff.
This is her first solo venture, a joint endeavor with owners from Flatiron Lounge and Zinc Bar. Little expense has been spared (there's a grocery-store selection of fruit and herbs, as well as custom ice-cube makers), which means drinks cost more than a Mets bleacher seat. I select the Fitty-Fitty ($12), while my companions try the dirty martini ($15), Jamaican Firefly (homemade ginger beer, dark rum, lime juice, clove tincture; $12) and Whiskey Smash (bourbon, muddled lemon and mint, simple syrup; $12).
Kissing old-school goodbye, the waitress punches our order into a computer. Black-clad bartenders jostle cocktail shakers like they're maracas. Then we wait. And wait. And wait. Ten, 15 minutes disappear, giving us time to converse about how long the drinks are taking to arrive.
When they do, oompah! My Fitty-Fitty is sledgehammer strong yet buttery smooth, while the Firefly is a spiffed-up Dark and Stormy. An eye-opening martini arrives in a small-mouthed glass, not a sloshing soup bowl, alongside a carafe of iced "water back." The Smash, though dolled up with mint, needs more substance, which is to say whiskey. Strength can't be corrected, but flavor can: "Play with your drinks," the waitress encourages, handing us a box of eyedroppers filled with lemon, lime, simple syrup and bitters. I appreciate the go-the-extra-mile effort, but please: I don't pay top dollar for a drink to doctor it myself. Would you drop chopped garlic into an entrée at Per Se?
We sip. We gab. The waitress arrives to entice us into another round. She scoops up our glasses, noticing that my friend's "water back" remains unsipped.
"Aren't you going to finish your drink?" she asks, gesturing to the still-brimming carafe.
"That's just water," he replies.
"No, honey, that ain't water," she says, "that's the rest of your martini."
His cheeks blush the color of fresh arterial blood. We meekly order another round. Disappointingly, the Earl Grey?tini (tea-steeped gin) is unavailable. "It take four days to make," explains the waitress. Instead, we settle for the Pegu Club, another Fitty and the $16 Jimmie Roosevelt-champagne, simple syrup, cognac and green Chartreuse. The Pegu is a tart, bracing island dream, while the pink Roosevelt leaves the sweet, awkward taste that champagne lovers adore. It is not a hit. We tell the waitress. She grabs the glass and brings another Pegu, removing the higher-priced drink from the bill.
Despite the considerate service and nearly perfect libations, we notice a revolving-door trend. Customers cash out and dash out after several cocktails. Inertia is so passé. Why? My hypothesis: Pegu Club is ideal for imbibing with a friend or two, perhaps a date-chatty situations. Low-key evenings, not slurring boozathons. Oh, you could get sloppy, and I won't stop you, but the better question is: Why would you? After several cocktails, the palate is bread-knife dull, drink nuances lost. Splurging on another drink may seem enticing, really, but so is having money in your pocket.