The Knicks were down double digits at halftime of Game Four, the bar had started to clear out and blue and orange fans were saying prayers to all 74 inches of Jalen Brunson. If you were at Super Burrito in the West Village, you saw me white-knuckling a California burrito \u2014 nothing like the ones found in San Antonio \u2014 with carne asada, French fries and sour cream. No, us Knicks fans weren\u2019t nervous for a second.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a good time to be a sports fan. The best time, probably, since I moved to the city eight years ago. You can catch a game at your bodega or public park thanks to watch parties across the city<\/a>, and restaurants have jumped on the bandwagon, squeezing new T.V.s and projectors wherever they can. More than once, I\u2019ve stopped for lunch somewhere and stayed for a full World Cup match.<\/p>\n Good luck to all of your home teams. If you\u2019ll excuse me, I\u2019m headed to one of these bars.<\/p>\n Wings in a dive, Knicks in five<\/p>\n The Wingbar<\/a> wasn\u2019t always a sports bar. It started in 2009 as a post-recession, punk dive bar with wings and two muted televisions, said Brian Bisbano, a co-owner and former bassist in the indie rock outfit the Dardys. Over the years, each time a New York sports team went to the playoffs, finals or Super Bowl, the screens multiplied. Today the T.V.s \u2014 I counted seven, but you may find more \u2014 follow you around the room like the steady gaze of the Mona Lisa.<\/p>\n The wings have grown, too, from orders of 10, 20 and 50 when the Wingbar first opened to heaps of 100 wings sold as drums or flats only, if you prefer, in varying spice levels. The classic hot is right for me, made with more Frank\u2019s RedHot than butter and spices that are closely guarded by the owner\u2019s family. (I taste Worcestershire sauce.) What\u2019s in the extra hot wings? \u201cI don\u2019t even know,\u201d Mr. Bisbano said. \u201cIt\u2019s our cook\u2019s recipe. When he\u2019s making them, I won\u2019t go anywhere near the kitchen.\u201d<\/p>\n 275 Smith Street (Degraw Street), Cobble Hill<\/a><\/p>\n They\u2019re off to the races \u2026<\/p>\n What\u2019s a Norwegian flag doing in an Irish pub in Sunset Park\u2019s Chinatown? \u201cIt\u2019s been a bar continuously since 1929,\u201d said Brendan Farley, a bartender at Soccer Tavern<\/a> for the last four decades who now owns the place. The bar predates the local Chinatown by several decades, arriving when Eighth Avenue was known to many Norwegians as Lapskaus Boulevard.<\/p>\n Whether in Little Norway or Chinatown, everyone needs a pub. For watching the Premier League, sure, but also to watch the horse races, the unofficial sport of Soccer Tavern. One screen is always set to the tracks, with a group of locals hunkered over the back tables, closely monitoring the odds. Almost everyone else is there to watch soccer, displayed on televisions and audible from the sidewalk. (You\u2019d hardly notice the TouchTunes machine by the door.) Halftime is a good opportunity to stock up on xiao long bao from Mr. Duck, peanut noodles from He Yi Xiaochi and other local dim sum, since Soccer Tavern is B.Y.O.D., as in dumplings. And they say Guinness is for fish and chips \u2026<\/p>\n 6004 8th Avenue (60th Street), Sunset Park<\/a><\/p>\n Can I interest you in a grill?<\/p>\n Maybe you don\u2019t want a bar full of jersied, jockeying fans. Maybe what you want is a low-set television and seven ounces of martini \u2014 eight if you count the meniscus \u2014 poured by a bartender who has been employed there since the Knicks last won a ring.<\/p>\n This is what you\u2019ll get at Wollensky\u2019s Grill<\/a> in Midtown, a white-tablecloth saloon next door to the steakhouse, Smith & Wollensky. The owners will almost certainly shudder when they hear their 46-year-old saloon is being called a sports bar. Still, there\u2019s no beating the allegations with televisions stationed at both ends of the bar and flexible hours \u2014 11:30 a.m. to 1 a.m. daily \u2014 that accommodate games in Dallas, Guadalajara and Toronto. Plus, there\u2019s the meat: steaks and burgers, but also prime rib carved into Flinstonian slabs or built into glistening sandwiches. I side with Pete Wells<\/a> that its best use is in prime rib hash, a retro platter of burnished meat, cubed potatoes and wobbly poached eggs. Call it a breakfast of champions.<\/p>\n 201 East 49th Street (Third Avenue), Midtown<\/a><\/p>\n Read past editions of the newsletter here<\/a>.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re enjoying what you\u2019re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Have New York City restaurant questions? Send us a note here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Need to know where to eat across the United States? Check out our guides to Atlanta<\/a>, Austin<\/a> Boston<\/a>, Chicago<\/a>, D.C.<\/a>, Los Angeles<\/a>, Miami<\/a>, Nashville<\/a>, New Orleans<\/a>, Philadelphia<\/a>, Portland, Ore.<\/a>, San Francisco<\/a> and Seattle<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Knicks were down double digits at halftime of Game Four, the bar had started to clear out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[83767,81653,43405,9,24,11,10,49,51,50,56,821,104883,400,104882,89465],"class_list":["post-272177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-bars-and-nightclubs","tag-cobble-hill-brooklyn","tag-midtown-area-manhattan","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-ny","tag-restaurants","tag-smith-wollensky","tag-soccer","tag-sunset-park-brooklyn","tag-world-cup-2026-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}