Paradise Lost — Restaurant in New York

This review is for cocktail bar people. This bar should have been a home run in the first inning.

I really debated and thought about this one. I even visited this bar 3 times before writing my review.

It has all the ingredients to be the best tropical/tiki bar in the city. It is larger, has better hours, located in prime LES, more staffed, and better funded than the rest of the tropical bars in the city. This venue is very big, since they use a large chunk of the real estate of the bar just for the entrance. Heck, they have a healthy amount of merchandise including multiple mugs, glasses and a commissioned illustrated menu that you can buy...that has been printed at least twice since I have visited as they changed and removed a couple items here and there.

So what went wrong? Execution.

Let's start with accommodations for patrons that walk in. The takeaway is that if you come here, to my chagrin, stick with Resy. For starters when this bar overflows ( and it does often), they just have you standing awkwardly behind patrons sitting in the bar like if this was a dive bar. But that is the thing, it is not. In a dive bar, usually there are sufficient accomodations to have patrons stand up. Here, you cannot place your drink anywhere, if you are standing behind the bar. You are just there, juggling a drink that if you know tiki, it is not designed to be held for prolonged periods of time. These things have very intricate and numerous garnishes that will fall off if you move them to much. Some of these things have multiple containers and even fire folks! Would you be comfortable blowing out a flaming sugar cube, while holding a purse, menu and a chaser your drink came with while standing up? I had to ask some people sitting to let me put my stuff there to attempt to drink my cocktail. Add that to the fact that there are constantly servers passing by on tight quarters coming through and lighting things on fire. It's just a recipe for hazardous situations.

The next big pain point is cost. It appears that the premium for drinks you are paying, is for the added cost of chants of the servers and cost of butane. Don't ask for a pour of quality rum unless you are ready to take a day loan. Stick to the well. Or in this bar parlance, the abyss. With the exception of the daiquiri, prices start at $20, but average around $23-$25. Just gonna mention these bars. Around the neighbour bar Superbueno tamarind punch, 20$. Timeless award winning recipient Angel Share's in the Village, signature Painted Paradise goes for $23. Top #1 bar in North America DCP coop cocktails are $20. A self described "classic" Mai tai at this establishment...$25. I rest my case.

But at the end of the day all would be forgiven if the drinks were any good. And I am sad to say the drinks at this establishment flavor wise are forgettable at best and undrinkable at worst. For the experience this place is selling and the premium they are charging, they did not deliver. Again, if it was a dive the drinks would be 10/10. But alas is not, and I'll grade accordingly. The martini stands out as it is perhaps the only stirred drink in a menu dominated by undescriptive tropical mayhem. Majority of drinks tasted unbalanced and some were downright cloyingly sweet or tastes like batched drinks that stayed too long in the fridge. One drink was lighted on fire and it tastes like if you would have indeed burned sludge with a flamethrower. I guess some people not only eat with their eyes, but also drink.

Disclosure, I am a huge tropical bar fan and of going to cocktail bars in general. Which is why this review is too long, passion is present in my writing, and disappointment is visible in my emotion.

I really wanted to like this place man. I even sneaked from my usual watering holes to give this place a chance. Multiple actually. I went as soon as it opened, I went some time after it and very recently. It's painful to write this. This tropical bar is for the tiktok generation. All the bluster and theatrics...just don't pay attention to cost...

TL:DR; a tiki bar speakeasy owned and operated by people who fail to understand that the pretension of most modern speakeasy’s is understood to largely be tongue in cheek and good natured, and instead stopping entirely after pretension. God save you if you resemble someone that one of the employees might relate to someone who bullied them in high school.

Incredibly nefarious energy.

The sign just inside the door insists you wait for the hostess. When the aforementioned hostess doesn’t appear for close to 10 minutes, we decided to push our luck and forge ahead.

Expecting to find a bar flirting with fire code levels of occupancy and fully prepared to retreat back to the waiting area with sincerest apologies, we were “pleasantly” surprised to find the bar mostly empty.

Assuming it would be no major grievance to grab two empty bar seats, we were quickly disproven of this notion by a bartender who broke his complete dismissal of us only to press on if we had checked in with the illusory hostess. When we admitted we had not, his indifference turned to thinly veiled hostility.

The hostess was summoned, I was not just carded, but also coerced to giving my email and cell phone on a form the purpose of which remains unclear.

After having been graced with the charity of being able to give patronage to their bar which, again, was largely empty, the colorful disdain of the barkeep resulted in two thoroughly average drinks.

The coup de gras was the bathroom which was soundtracked by Alistair Crowley recordings (very edgy, very provocative). Soon after entry, but not soon enough, my date and I debated whether to chug our drinks in the spirit of at least deriving some value for our dollar or flee in the moment to spare ourselves the aforementioned profoundly nefarious energy.

For what it’s worth we overheard at least two other parties chastised for entering without waiting for “Virgil” to lead them into the bar so maybe the fix is just to hire a hostess that is actually present at the hostess stand.

But hey it was cool that they played Laura...

We had a birthday there last night with a reserved section. The design of the space was really unique and fun, they turned a regular corridor into a cool moment that took you to the main area. None of us knew that this was cocktail styled eating, meaning low tables that are really only meant to have drinks on, so it was a bit uncomfortable to have dinner there. My husband and I don’t drink so we ordered 2 of the 3 mocktails on the extensive menu and they were bad. The Sacrifice drink (what I ordered) was so horrifically sweet and just basically overpriced ($12) juice, I couldn’t drink it and wasn’t offered a solution when the drink was taken away completely full. My husbands drink was a virgin pina colada, also so sweet and full of ice which left him only a few sips. I worked in the bar industry for 16 years and would have loved to have some more thought out non/alcoholic drinks on the menu instead of 3 after thought drinks. A few of the alcoholic drinks that our friends got weren’t loved either and one was said to have “tasted like medicine”. This could be because the menu is too big. The music is also insanely loud with very little room for conversation. The service is subpar with no one server taking care of us so we were confused as to who to talk to when we needed something. It would be a while between each table visit of staff. The food was delicious but when my husband ordered quite a few dishes the server put our food in front of others in our party 2 tables away which left us having to awkwardly say “hey do you mind passing our food down” to the strangers in our party. The vibe is cool, the decor is awesome, the food was great (although we had to ask for rum sauce on the tots) but the service wasn’t good, mocktails and some of the drinks were gross and the music was too loud, even for people...