Union Square has plenty of places to get a drink, but not many where a beer and shot costs $9, a hot dog goes for $3, and 50 cents buys a song on a jukebox stocked with 45s like Muddy Waters’s “Got My Mojo Working” and Ritchie Valens singing “La Bamba.”
Bernie and Herb’s opened Friday, July 31, at 28 E. 16th Street, between Fifth Avenue and Union Square West. It’s inside what had once been the VIP room of Coffee Shop, the sceney, model-staffed restaurant that helped put the neighborhood on the nightlife map in the 1990s. This new bar comes from Dakota Pollock, a longtime bartender and manager at Lower East Side’s 169 Bar, with David Goldberg, who cooked at 169 back when it served pulled pork mac and cheese and po’boy sandwiches. The third partner, Jose Beltre, was also a bartender there.
Outside Bernie and Herb’s in Union Square. Bernie and Herb’s
Bernie and Herb’s carries plenty of 169 Bar’s DNA: cheap drinks, a jukebox, illuminated palm trees, and an ambition to put people who would not ordinarily share a room next to one another at the bar. Hanson even gave Pollock his blessing to put 169’s pickle martini on the menu.
169 traces its history to 1916, when it was known as the Bloody Bucket; Hanson bought it in 2006 and transformed it into the eccentric dive it is today.
Pollock’s tenure there was not exactly linear. Owner Charles Hanson fired him twice, Pollock says, but he kept returning to drink at the bar. “He’d be like, ‘Hey, you want to make some money?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘All right, go do this.’” Pollock eventually worked his way from barback to bartender to manager.
The connection arrives at an uncertain moment for 169 Bar. Hanson is embroiled in an eviction and trademark dispute with his landlord, who Hanson alleges is trying to claim the bar’s name and martini-glass logo and reopen a copycat in its longtime East Broadway home, the New York Post reported in June. The landlord did not respond to the Post’s request for comment. Eater has also reached out to the bar.
Bernie and Herb’s has a menu of inexpensive bar food. Bernie and Herb’s
Bernie and Herb’s
At Bernie and Herb’s, Pollock is trying to transplant 169’s democratic spirit to a neighborhood where he sees too many corporate operations and too few bars built for regulars.
“We want Wall Street bros to come in there and talk to washed-up soap opera stars,” he says, “and NYU students to hang out with musicians.”
Inside the crowded bar Bernie and Herb’s
The jukebox at Bernie and Herb’s Bernie and Herb’s
Most of the menu stays below $11. Well drinks cost $9; draft beers start at $8; cans run from $5 for a nonalcoholic Athletic to $10 for Gowanus Gold. The beer-and-shot special is $9, or $10 if the beer is Tecate. During happy hour, which runs until 7 p.m., well drinks, draft beers, and the beer-and-shot combo drop to $7. Wine is $8. Classic cocktails are the exception to the headline-friendly pricing: They cost $13, or $11 during happy hour from opening to 7 p.m.
The short food menu is just as cheap. Plain hot dogs cost $3. Dressed-up versions include the Itzel, with queso, salsa, pickled jalapeños, and garlic aioli; and the Corporan, topped with queso, caramelized onions, pickled cabbage, and slaw, both $6. A hot dog with shrimp and queso costs $7, while a pulled pork sandwich is $10.
The approximately 1,200-square-foot bar has 17 seats at the counter, another five along a standing bar, and roughly 16 to 20 seats lining the wall. Mirrors, striped upholstery, red lighting, and artificial palms create the sort of deliberately mismatched room that looks as though it has been accumulating for years.
For now, Bernie and Herb’s is open from 2 p.m. to midnight. Pollock says he hopes to extend the hours to noon to 2 a.m. by the end of the month (The bar has already been approved to remain open until 2 a.m. and is waiting for its lawyer to finalize the paperwork). Once the later hours take effect, Pollock hopes it will become a post-shift landing place for restaurant workers.
A rendering of the exterior of Bernie and Herb’s without the scaffolding. Bernie and Herb’s
Bernie and Herb’s most significant piece of decor is still to come: Coffee Shop opened on the corner of Union Square West and 16th Street in 1990 and became a destination with Brazilian food, all-day breakfast, cocktails, model waitresses, and late-night hours. It closed in 2018 after nearly three decades. Its enormous vertical neon sign became one of the neighborhood’s most recognizable landmarks, as former Eater critic Robert Sietsema wrote at the time.
Goldberg’s childhood friend happens to be the building’s landlord. When Goldberg asked what became of the sign, the landlord told him it had been saved but was too large to install at home. He offered it to the bar and gave the partners permission to bring it back to the building.
Scaffolding currently prevents the team from erecting the sign. But once that comes down, the Coffee Shop sign will light up over East 16th Street again, this time with Bernie and Herbs added at the top — a piece of old Union Square announcing its newest neighborhood bar.
The bar is named for Goldberg’s father, Bernie, and Pollock’s father, Herb, both of whom have died. For Pollock, the name signals what the partners want the place to be: affordable, local, and welcoming to anyone.
“We really want a place for people to come hang out and relax after work or whenever,” he says.