![]() You might expect Irish cuisine, but that’s largely not what you’ll find, unless there is a Gaelic origin I’m unaware of behind calamari, sesame kale Caesar salad, or schnitzel. It’s with the food that the menu really runs into trouble. True, they only gave us one drink menu because they had somehow run out (on a Wednesday night with a half-empty space), but I enjoyed my Bee’s Knees (gin, honey, and lemon) anyway. It still suffers from the bar’s lack of clarity-there’s a Victorian section, a Prohibition section, a “Wise Guys” section (including a drink called “My Bookie’s Wife’s Cocktail”), and a Seasonal section-but at least all four look and taste good. The cocktail menu is Oscar Wilde’s high point. (Also, their website boasts: “Mens room based on Leslie Castle in Ireland where Paul McCartney got married,” so…there’s that. The whole thing had a general aura of “Is it kinda old? Chuck it on the mantelpiece! Any mantelpiece!” And the building’s historical antecedents don’t explain why the sound system alternated between The Best of Glen Miller and classic rock, or why the ladies’ room had an old time-y wireless in it playing what appeared to be a WWII-era broadcast. But the Victorian era and the Jazz Age are wildly different in terms of decor, music, social mores, and even food and drink, so they make pretty strange bedfellows as shared inspiration. Perfect reading material for dinner! I guess!Įxcept once we dug into the historical references a bit, they didn’t seem to be strictly Victorian? To be precise, the bar is Victorian- and Prohibition-themed, since the building spent a little over a decade as the Prohibition Enforcement Headquarters. Directly over our heads as we ate, for example, was a fantastically ugly two-toned marble cherub with a small figurine of a dog poking out from behind him, and at one point we pulled an antique book down off the nearest ledge and discovered that it was an alphabetized guide to the characters of English literature. The place is lit by a billion lamps and chandeliers, many festooned with ostrich feathers, and every available ledge and mantelpiece (there are a lot of mantelpieces) is crammed with Victorian-ish bric-a-brac. Gossiping with my best buddy #oscarwilde.Ī post shared by Jessica Plummer on at 8:30am PDTĪs probably befits a restaurant named for Oscar Wilde, the overwhelming effect upon walking in is: my god, The Aesthetic. The whole effect was striking enough that we resolved to go back for dinner. The ornate windows are painted with gilt lettering and crammed with Victorian knickknacks, and the glimpse of the bar inside-at 118.5 feet, the longest in New York-is impressive. Yes, you read that last sentence right.Ī friend and I first passed Oscar Wilde a few weeks ago-in a couple of senses, because not only is that the name of the restaurant, it’s got a bench out front with a statue of its namesake looking dapper and slightly uncomfortable. ![]() Naturally, I couldn’t leave the new Oscar Wilde-themed novelty gastropub in Manhattan to such a fate. Oscar Wilde once wrote: “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” ![]() Follow her on Twitter at All posts by Jessica Plummer She loves running, knitting, and thinking about superheroes, and knows an unnecessary amount of things about Donald Duck. Her day job is in books, her side hustle is in books, and she writes books on the side (including a short story in Sword Stone Table from Vintage). Jessica Plummer has lived her whole life in New York City, but she prefers to think of it as Metropolis. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |