Pioneer Spirit
Like a 15-year-old boy flitting between punk, goth and indie rock, bars and restaurants are forever reinventing, searching for a coffer-filling formula. Sometimes the switcheroos are successful, such as Williamsburg's punk-rock pit turned pressed-tin Sweetwater bistro. Others are botched sex-change operations, like the immoral-lair Limelight turned cheeseball club Avalon. In the former category we find Red Hook's Pioneer Bar-B-Q, revised by familiar entrepreneurs.
The Sweetwater team, Alan Harding and Jim Mamary opened the Old Pioneer Beer Hall & Garden in summer 2004, hoping to replicate their magic touches gracing Gowanus Yacht Club, Schnäck and Zombie Hut. But Old Pioneer's hot dogs, hamburgers and cold beer were too similar to the grub at GYC and Schnäck. Last August Pioneer was rebranded as a Southern-style joint with a modern-Brooklyn concession: smoked brisket is offered alongside BBQ tofu.
This please-everyone menu is not reason No. 1 to visit Pioneer. With spring sun flinging New Yorkers outdoors, garden and sidewalk space is in short supply, and Pioneer has a rare good-weather commodity: a fine garden with an always-available seat.
In a more-populated neighborhood, this would ring an alarm. No decent bar should be vacant beneath blue skies. Yet Pioneer sits in Red Hook's shabby heart, a 25-minute walk from the nearest subway. Thankfully, the B61 bus cruises past the Pioneer, and cheerful bartenders gladly let me store my bike inside on a recent weeknight.
To cool off from sweaty pedaling, I embraced Pioneer's buy-one-get-one-free happy hour (daily until 8 p.m.). Bottles and cans are mildly blah, whiskeys and bourbons are abundant but the drafts hit the jackpot. Budweiser (a penny-pinching $3), Red Hook's ESB Lager ($4) and Blue Point's Oatmeal Stout ($5) were pondered, but my stomach went local: Sixpoint's Red Hook-brewed Sweet Action ($5). Two of these potent pints are enough to spin your head and send you into a seat.
Cracked red vinyl booths beckon beneath vintage soda bottles. The wide bar mirror is bordered by beer labels, while the walls are swathed in vintage ads and photos of long-dead strangers. The scene is thrift shop on a whiskey bender. The pebble-strewn backyard is no more cohesive, filled with faded red metal chairs and rickety tables. A garden hose curls across the ground like a paralyzed snake, brown rags flutter suspiciously and a rusty horseshoe pit begs sportsman to aim for a ringer-or tetanus.
"It's like a junkyard," a friend says one evening, "with everything but the kitchen sink. Wait-they have a kitchen sink." He points to a far wall where, sure enough, there sits a kitchen sink.
Perhaps the sink jumpstarts a chain reaction. Sink = food = hunger. If that's the case, Pioneer can kill greasy cravings. The BBQ Brisket Sandwich ($6.50) is crisp and smoky, while the pulled pork sandwich ($6) is piled, baby-soft deliciousness. Double for the BBQ Tofu ($6). Cheeseburgers ($7) are dribble-down-your-chin juicy, but take heed:
"Don't order it well-done," a bearded bartender instructed me.
"Medium-rare, then," I answered.
"Nice."
Still, my sun-reddened cheeks were pinker than the burger's center. Another misstep was the portobello, mozzarella and roasted-red-pepper "Sloppy Joe."
"How sloppy is it?" we inquired.
"Real sloppy," another sassy, though nonbearded, bartender answered.
But "real sloppy" hardly prepared us for two buns drowning in a bland soup dotted with land-mine mushroom chunks. Thankfully, all was forgiven by the shoestring French fries ($3). They arrived in a bird's nest as crisp as pralines and beach-tan brown. Two people can easily split an order-or be greedy and split your pants.
Where Pioneer always pleases is with easygoing sass. Bartenders are quick to offer lip, even quicker to offer a drink buyback. An evening of snail-slow beer sipping meshes perfectly with Pioneer's decrepit charm, which feels not forced but organic. Here, one hour dissolves into four, with beer glasses stacking up like a Tower of Babel, letting you babble about everything save for the evening's most important question: How am I getting home?
718-624-0700