(Especially on those nights when his band, J.D. & The Straight Shot, a third-rate bar band of wealthy businessmen who sinfully play "A Change Is Gonna Come" in their set, opens the show. There is NOTHING more offensive).
The long, narrow space is relatively small, anchored at one end by the L-shaped bar and at the other by a first-rate sushi bar.
It's a place of big-storied garrulousness, backslapping camaraderie and gruff-but-lovable old-timers: in short, a first-rate neighborhood bar.
This is an ode to a first-rate neighborhood bar that Bounds, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, discovered in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, when she and her partner fled to Garrison, N.Y., after their Lower Manhattan apartment was damaged.
But it's also less coherent and delicious than what you might find at a first-rate ramen bar or Italian restaurant; a dish more amusing than it is satisfying.
In the latter category the offerings include a first-rate hummus hut; a Jaffa Juice bar; a mini spice market called the Larder (with plenty of homemade halva in addition to spices); a mini greenmarket called Hayarok; Lia, an Israeli chocolatier which makes its own kind of Toblerone; and Rokach Yam, Mediterranean tapas bar.
Run by the Wright brothers - that's chef, Joe, and manager Ben - this delicatessen and (newly expanded) bar and restaurant is a first-rate modern food hub.
The bar also offers cheeses and light snacks, including a first-rate sun-dried tomato cheese spread ($7).
He was a first-rate parliamentarian.
A FIRST-RATE MADNESS, by Nassir Ghaemi.
A first-rate piece of social reportage.
