{"id":306494,"date":"2026-07-27T13:20:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T13:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/306494\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T13:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T13:20:09","slug":"how-the-upper-east-side-became-new-york-citys-last-bastion-for-craft-beer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/306494\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Upper East Side Became New York City\u2019s Last Bastion for Craft Beer"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you haven\u2019t spent much time on the Upper East Side, you may have your own perceptions of the neighborhood depending on your cultural touchstones tied to the storied corner of Manhattan. You imagine Blair Waldorf sipping Veuve Clicquot, Ramona Singer reaching \u201cturtle time\u201d through a Pinot Grigio portal, finance bros toasting each other with Macallan<\/a>, or frat dudes chugging macro lagers. What you probably don\u2019t picture is a thriving craft beer scene, but it\u2019s there.<\/p>\n

The selection extends from American craft to traditional European. There\u2019s Jones Wood Foundry<\/a> on 76th Street, an English pub with a touted cask program. For German beer, there\u2019s the Heidelberg<\/a> restaurant on Second Avenue and Schaller\u2019s Stube Sausage Bar<\/a> right next door. Not far from there is Cafe D\u2019Alsace<\/a>, a rare restaurant with a dedicated beer sommelier<\/a>. City Swiggers<\/a> is the local bottle shop and bar, on 86th Street since 2011; there\u2019s also City Hops<\/a> on 60th Street and a location of New York City chain Craft + Carry<\/a> on Second Avenue. The Pony Bar<\/a> holds court on First Avenue and 75th Street; Bondurants<\/a> also serves up craft beer on 85th Street; the Jeffrey<\/a> is a craft beer and cocktail stalwart on 60th Street; and Earl\u2019s Beer & Cheese<\/a> sits farther north on Park Avenue.<\/p>\n

That this many beer-centric businesses settled in a neighborhood more frequently associated with Martinis<\/a> and fine wine is curious on its own. Arguably more intriguing, though, is how they\u2019ve all continued to chug along as overall craft beer interest wanes and beer bars drop like flies in other neighborhoods of New York City. The East Village and nearby Lower East Side have bid farewell to Proletariat<\/a>, The Grand Delancey<\/a>, Top Hops<\/a>, and Good Beer<\/a>, to name a few. The loss of Spuyten Duyvil<\/a> hit many in Williamsburg hard in 2024; the area also saw the closures of The Well<\/a> and Mug\u2019s Alehouse<\/a>. Mug\u2019s has reopened under new owners, but it\u2019s a \u201cshadow of its former self,\u201d says longtime Brew York beer blogger Chris O\u2019Leary; similarly, mourned Midtown beer bar The Ginger Man<\/a> has also recently made an utterly mid comeback.<\/p>\n

The list goes on for neighborhoods throughout the boroughs. But while the Upper East Side is certainly not immune to the tides of changing customer preferences and the economy \u2014 R.I.P. David Copperfield\u2019s<\/a> \u2014 it has somehow remained a haven for beer bars while neighborhoods from the West Village to Greenpoint whittle their beer scenes down to just a few destinations. What is it about the Upper East Side that allows this little enclave to carry on?<\/p>\n

\"HowCredit: David Krauss
\nBrewing Up a Beer Scene<\/p>\n

The Upper East Side historically favors beer, notes City Swiggers co-owner Pamela Rice. Earlier in the 20th century, the neighborhood was the nucleus of NYC\u2019s German population \u2014 East 86th Street was dubbed \u201cSauerkraut Boulevard<\/a>.\u201d There were breweries along 90th to 94th Streets, like the German-founded Hell Gate Brewery. Other beer-loving communities like Czechs and Eastern Europeans lived in the area, too, but as the Upper East Side developed with subway lines and the cost of living shot up by the 1950s, these groups dispersed to other neighborhoods. The last brewery of the area shuttered in 1966<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDon’t Miss A Drop
\n\t\t\tGet the latest in beer, wine, and cocktail culture sent straight to your inbox.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Beer writer Kevin Kain sees international influences as having stretched on, though, thanks to the Upper East Side\u2019s proximity to the United Nations and a concentration of consulate general locations uptown.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis includes the Consulate General of the Czech Republic, home to the Czech restaurant Bohemian Spirit,\u201d Kain says. \u201cBohemian Spirit is great, but the prior restaurant at this location, called Hospoda, was the first place I had heard about and experienced the different Lukr pours<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

This, Kain adds, was a bit before 2011. Craft beer existed but had yet to fully explode into its current ubiquity. It was virtually absent on the Upper East Side, barring the aforementioned David Copperfield\u2019s. The area had its German and Czech beer heritage, but its bar scene \u2014 excluding stuffier spots serving the upper crust \u2014 consisted primarily of copy-and-paste Irish pubs and sports bars. So the rising interest in craft beer signaled opportunity for many.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlan looked on a map and made little \u2018x\u2019es where all our competition might be,\u201d Pamela Rice says of her husband and City Swiggers co-owner Alan Rice. \u201cThere was a hole on the Upper East Side, no store like ours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like City Swiggers, The Pony Bar opened in 2011 after founder Dan McLaughlin had a similar realization. The bar\u2019s original location had been doing brisk business in Hell\u2019s Kitchen since 2009, selling what McLaughlin calls \u201ca staggering amount of beer.\u201d They had 20 draft lines and two beer engines for cask ales. This was revolutionary stuff in 2008, and really still in 2011, especially on the Upper East Side. Before City Swiggers and The Pony Bar opened, craft beer-curious Upper East Siders had to hop on the 6 train to drink from the well.<\/p>\n

Earl\u2019s Beer & Cheese opened in 2011, too, and three years later, the UES got Bondurants, a modern pub with a dialed-in craft beer program and 24 taps.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve personally lived and\/or worked up here for 21 years, I love it here,\u201d says Bondurants owner Caitlin Prunka. \u201cI\u2019d worked in a brewpub in college and enjoyed craft beer, but there weren\u2019t a ton of places yet \u2014 we\u2019d go to Pony Bar and City Swiggers, but there was nothing right here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Upper East Side beer scene has always felt like less of a scene to me. In other buzzy [neighborhoods], people get over it and move on. Or, it gets too expensive. [The UES] has always been a little more consistent and stable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRight here\u201d refers to the pocket surrounding Bondurants\u2019s corner of 85th Street and Second Avenue. People tend to view the Upper East Side segmented further into micro-neighborhoods. The distinctions make sense \u2014 it\u2019s hard to square that the 1-percenters-populated strip between Park and Fifth Avenues is the same neighborhood as the farther-east territory known as Yorkville, 79th to 96th Streets, Third Avenue to the East River. This is where that German stronghold was a century ago; today, it\u2019s one of the most densely populated subdivisions<\/a> of New York City.<\/p>\n

Yorkville is diverse and also more affordable than the Upper East Side that gets more pop-culture airtime. It\u2019s where recent grads move, where families settle, where people grow old. This is the kind of area where people get into their routines of visiting their same few favorite bars and restaurants within, say, a six-block radius. The Pony Bar can hold it down as the craft beer bar on First Avenue in the 70s while Bondurants taps in for Second Avenue in the 80s.<\/p>\n

McLaughlin says as the American craft beer scene evolved in the 2010s, he saw Untappd<\/a> beer tickers filling Pony Bar stools seeking out the latest and greatest. The city\u2019s craft beer bar scene hit a sweet spot that lasted until around 2014, when the Craft NY Act<\/a> legalized brewery taprooms in the state of New York, and NYC saw a flutter of taproom openings. In some Brooklyn neighborhoods, this brought on a wave of competition, spelling trouble for the local beer bars. But the Upper East Side was about as far as you could get from the city\u2019s brewery clusters in spots like Williamsburg, Bushwick, Gowanus, and Long Island City, so bars like Pony Bar and Bondurants were able to maintain their allure.<\/p>\n

\u201cProbably the one brewery even remotely convenient to get to from the Upper East Side was Bronx Brewery, but there\u2019s this mental block: \u2018Oh, it\u2019s in another borough,\u2019\u201d O\u2019Leary says. Barring some more recent satellite taprooms that have opened in other parts of Manhattan, a true brewery taproom experience has always meant crossing a river for Upper East Siders, and spots like Pony Bar, O\u2019Leary says, scratch the itch. \u201cIf you want that community experience, Pony Bar fills in, and [McLaughlin\u2019s] been great at supporting local breweries.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"HowCredit: David Krauss
\nCraft Beer Changes, But the Upper East Side Endures<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was 2017 when I started to see a dip in our draft sales for the first time,\u201d McLaughlin says \u2014 that\u2019s also the year the Hell\u2019s Kitchen Pony Bar closed. 16-ounce cans had become the de rigueur format for craft beer, and the uptown Pony Bar began turning through kegs more slowly and bringing in packaged beer. Cask ale sales \u201cdisappeared overnight,\u201d he adds, and he abandoned casks altogether in 2018. Simultaneously, people started ordering more liquor, and McLaughlin began switching tap lines over to draft cocktails. This was also around the time when especially dedicated beer enthusiasts were starting to trek out of town to hyped breweries.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople really into beer were starting to go right to the source,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019d ask guests what they\u2019d been up to, and they\u2019d say, \u2018Oh, I was at Other Half, I waited on line for three hours and bought three cases,\u2019 or, \u2018I\u2019m driving to Vermont next week to go to Hill Farmstead and Alchemist.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2023, McLaughlin hesitantly did what he promised himself he never would: add a non-craft beer to his lineup. But the Guinness boom<\/a> was undeniable. \u201cWithin a week, it became a top-selling product.\u201d<\/p>\n

Upper East Siders are still frequenting their beer spots, but orders have diversified. Among a group of five friends, there might be three drinking craft beer, one drinking Guinness, and one drinking a Negroni<\/a>. At Bondurants, Prunka says she hasn\u2019t seen a substantial drop in beer, but the kinds of beer people want have changed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest drop off we\u2019ve seen is in higher-ABV beers,\u201d she notes. \u201cWe still sell imperial stouts in the winter, but there\u2019s almost no interest in triple IPAs<\/a> and significantly less interest in double IPAs. \u2026 People are now looking to extend their time together, have more lower-ABV beers, and more conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The diversification of customers\u2019 drink preferences is what\u2019s hurt other beer bars in other neighborhoods and cities across the United States. Virtually every bar has craft beer options, as well as just about everything else, so why bother seeking out a specifically craft beer-centric destination? What the Upper East Side has that other neighborhoods don\u2019t, though, is more of a long-term community vibe. People live there longer and if they\u2019ve established that their favorite spot is City Swigger\u2019s or Earl\u2019s or Jones Wood Foundry, they\u2019re going to keep going there. These are their places, and they just happen to serve world-class beer.<\/p>\n

\u201cProbably the one brewery even remotely convenient to get to from the Upper East Side was Bronx Brewery, but there\u2019s this mental block: \u2018Oh, it\u2019s in another borough.\u2019 If you want that community experience, Pony Bar fills in, and [McLaughlin\u2019s] been great at supporting local breweries.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Upper East Side beer scene has always felt like less of a scene to me,\u201d Kain says. \u201cIn other buzzy [neighborhoods], people get over it and move on. Or, it gets too expensive. [The UES] has always been a little more consistent and stable.\u201d There\u2019s a good mix of younger people who, as Prunka points out, never knew a world where craft beer wasn\u2019t just what you drank if you like beer, as well as older people who moved uptown during the craft beer boom, dug their heels in at their local watering holes, and still have good taste in beer. Upper East Siders aren\u2019t trend chasers or hype seekers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re quietly enjoying some of the best and most diverse beer in the city, without putting a spotlight on it that might attract outsiders and the volatility that they might bring as consumers,\u201d Kain reasons.<\/p>\n

McLaughlin has been able to see firsthand the Upper East Side\u2019s unique position as one of Manhattan\u2019s least transient neighborhoods, as he\u2019s also run Pony Bar and other bars in Hell\u2019s Kitchen.<\/p>\n

\u201cBusiness was good but we never became someone\u2019s third space,\u201d he says of his Midtown spots. \u201cWhereas with the Pony Bar uptown, we were able to. We have longtime regulars who saw us through the pandemic. \u2026 The community here is just so strong.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have people who have been coming in since the beginning,\u201d Pamela Rice says. \u201cYou get very close.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people here use craft beer bars as their third space. We don\u2019t have giant living rooms in NYC where people can gather. And compared to cocktail bars or wine bars, with beer, it\u2019s lower-ABV, you can have more, stay longer. \u2026 It\u2019s a more accessible third place.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t