Arlo & Esme, filled with white porcelain teacups and window seats with porch-side roses, is the grandmother’s cottage you’d always hoped you’d inherit.
But if you’re going to dream up a cottage for bequeathing, why stop there? Give Grannie a little credit. How about a catacomb of nighttime revelry? Two bars? A pool table? A disco ball? A DJ booth? A make-out nook? Arlo & Esme, then, is the cocktail-slugging, disco-dancing, pool-sharking, bust-a-moving, suck-facing Grandma’s cottage you’ve never had. And, damn, it’s good to be home.
This bi-level café-by-day, dance-cavern-by-night provides sanctuary to a whole heap of downtown paradoxes. The ground floor, beautifully crisp in blacks, whites and aubergine, opens at 8am on weekdays and 10am on weekends with Hoboken-based Kobricks coffee, handmade espresso drinks and Blue Sky bakery’s delicious organic pastries. The morning/noontime crowd is mainly students, and you’ll leave smarter by association after just one glass of wine. You’ll also leave drunker by juxtaposition, too, as the NYU kiddies brush up their Shakespeare the whole time you’re tipping back your merlot.
Feeling peckish? Owners Gage Pray and Harry Joannides (owners of Bar Six, too) have big plans for small-plate tapas. For now, though, Katz’s and Prune deliver some of the best food downtown has to offer — not exactly slim pickings.
Weeknights are low-key at Arlo & Esme, and this is not the place to go for your beer pong rally. Bring a book, a close friend or just those good manners your mama gave you, and you’ll have yourself a wonderful night.
Weekend evenings, though, the downstairs reveals A & E’s underbelly of revelry. The 4,000-square foot basement, decked out in dark colors and Venetian themes, is packed. In addition to the wine and liquor upstairs, the downstairs bar serves a bevy of beer on tap, including Six Point Sweet Action, along with $7 well cocktails. Don’t be surprised to see a bucket of bottled beer for sale.
Which brings us to the weekend crowd… Arlo & Esme attracts an odd mix, equal parts too-cool pseudo-scenesters and primp-a-licious Sex and the City knock-offs. Here, the East Village meets the Lower East Side, the Six-Dollar PBR meets the Twelve-Dollar Mojito, the UES’s Great Fraternity Migration meets the Olsens’ High Fashion Faux-Slumming.
Oh well. Just shrug it off, hug the drag queen, and come back Sunday for the window-seat, roses and wine. Grandma would be proud.
ARLO & ESME :: 42 E. 1st St. between First Ave. and Second Ave., New York, New York
