The City’s Best After-Work Bar Is Back

It’s easy to overlook the need for quality in a bar for post-work drinks. It’s been a long day, and the ease (and the beer-and-shot specials) of a dive is right there. A great cocktail bar, though, does a much better job of setting the tone for the rest of the night — just think of how, pre-pandemic, when we were all cooped up like chickens for five days a week, having a 5:07 p.m. negroni at an establishment that really cared felt special. In the Financial District, that bar was Blacktail. The Cuban-inspired cocktail spot — from the team behind The Dead Rabbit, another legendary FiDi watering hole — closed four years ago, but on May 1, it returned as a pop-up at Back Bar in the Kimpton Hotel Eventi.

Tucked behind the Chelsea hotel’s main lobby bar, Back Bar’s only entry point is a small door that, when closed, resembles a service entrance. Here, director of operations Chris Lauber and his team have been staging revivals of some of the city’s favorite cocktail bars, including Blacktail’s, which will last for the next three months.

“We were so excited to redesign the space to match the old bar’s feeling,” Lauber says. “We found an old fan from the 1920s just like the one that was in the old Blacktail. We rebuilt the green drawers with the different liquors that sit behind the bar. Even the murals were repurposed behind the bar to draw visitors' eyes.” The result is a small capsule of what the original Blacktail was like, with Cuban-inspired touches in a soft, metallic palette and old photos set into 10 large alcoves at the back of the bar.

Cuban cocktails like mojitos and banana daiquiris can sometimes bring to mind massive glasses one must grip with both hands and sip through a crazy straw. But at Blacktail, they’re served chilled and refined, like the nicest martinis or old-fashioneds at a swanky hotel bar. “We’ve brought back a lot of the favorite cocktails from the old bar, so people who are coming because they remember the old space can still find some familiar favorites,” says Will Pasternak, the former head bartender of Blacktail, who’s returned to lead eight of the original staff. “We’ve also created some new options that are a balancing act between strictly Cuban cocktails, and some that are more Mexican/Cuban or Miami/Cuban influences, like a piña colada, for instance.”

It’s about to be a hot summer, and most companies are bringing their employees in three days a week or more. With that in mind, wouldn’t it be nice to get out after work and have a drink with your friends or favorite colleagues that wasn’t another flat beer sweating in your hand? That’s reason enough to go to Blacktail and get the piña colada you really want, after escaping your Midtown cubicle for the day.