Patent Pending — Restaurant in New York

Okay so, this should be an interesting one. I’ve been to this place twice, and the first time was when COVID was still a huge problem in NYC, and that visit was surprisingly fantastic. Fantastic in every sense, the drinks were AMAZING, tasty, innovative and well delivered. The ambience was stellar, due to the capacity constraints put in place due to COVID it wasn’t at maximum capacity which also means the servers / bartenders / other staff weren’t overworked. It was expensive but the quality of drinks and service justified it. (besides what isn’t expensive in NYC, right? ). I had a great time with my friends and I left the place happy and drunk (as one should). I would recommend Patent Pending to anybody who asked me for a great place with really good drinks.

FAST FORWARD 2 years (2023) - I went back to Patent Pending, there was a queue to enter but my friends and i didn’t have to wait too long, within 20 minutes we were escorted inside to another waiting area where we were asked to order drinks while we waited for a booth / table to open up. We were given water while we waited -now this is where the 1 star review starts from- 2/ 4 glasses of water were dirty (one had a very prominent lipstick mark on it), we asked for another glass but the server who we asked gave us a look of annoyance as if our request for clean glassware was of huge inconvenience. Moving on, we were seated soon after at a booth that had a 90 minute limit. the bar wasn’t really full so I didn’t quite understand the long wait outside - but i’ll leave to being short staffed and better service We ordered drinks and the drinks came in pretty promptly. They were good drinks, not AMAZING. Anyway, the server came around another time at the 30 minute mark asking for more drinks but only I ordered another drink since the others were still nursing their drinks. I asked for the “fanciest drink” they had on the menu, which was the “Impossible Idea” which the website describes as “Mezcal, Banana Infused Rum, Sherry, Amaro w/ carmelized bananas” and is priced at $33. It’s essentially the drink and then caramelized bananas on the side. (The drink was good but I honestly couldn’t understand why it was the BEST drink or why it was priced at $33 but that’s just my opinion as a “passionate alcoholic”) At the 50th minute mark just as we were signaling the server to take our request for more drinks, she walks upto our table, drops the cheque and walks away. As one would imagine, we weren’t pleased by this. We called her and asked her if we could place an order for more drinks to which she said she assumed that we weren’t gonna order more as nobody at the table had ordered more every time she had stopped by our table and asked us. Anyway after some back and forth, we conveyed that we would like to order more and then she eventually did take our order after “clearing it with her manager”. After that we got our second round of drinks, had them and then asked for the cheque 15 minutes after. (70 minutes of being at the table). Now the cheque was for 7 drinks and it was around $200, a bit on the expensive side but again I like to think places in NYC can be expensive but in my opinion DEFINITELY not worth it. The server comes by to take the payment and in person hovers over the tablet while the payment processes, now comes the time when you tip the server for their services. I would tip 20% ideally for good service (because i don’t work on Wall St.) but the suggested tips are as follows - 20%, 22%, 26%. We tipped 20% because there wasn’t an option to tip lower and to that the server rolled her eyes and gave a curt and condescending thanks before walking off.

Now, I’m not saying NYC is a reasonable affordable place. I’m not saying that people can’t have bad days. I’m also not saying that I had the worst cocktails. But what I’m saying is, if you want to spend money in NYC on boujee cocktails, Patent Pending is NOT the place you want to go to.

*P.S - as seen below - i would recommend getting “hit by a taxi” than...

What a fantastic speakeasy!

In case you want spoiler warnings in how to find the speakeasy...

SPOILER WARNINGS

Look for the coffee shop with stairs going downwards. It looks super dark at night, but most likely you'll see a good line forming depending when you go. Check-in with the front desk (they may be or may not be there as I'll mention below - they are doing a ton of jobs) and stand in the queue. You'll need everyone there in order to get in. In the early hours around 5-6:30PM, the wait was easy/super short (at most took 15 minutes). They also take reservations.

Once you go in, there's (what I believe to be) two main bar areas. (Try to take a peek at the second bar area more in the back. Love the mood in the back which has most of the lighting under the back bar and keeps the rest of the speakeasy super dark.) We were able to go in twice and were able to sit in both areas which was neat from a booth that seated four to bar stools. The interior is gorgeous. As you'll see from the menu and description, this whole set-up is super inspired by the original reason this building was built - where Nikola Tesla spent his time experimenting on radio waves. The menu is completely build around this concept - showing off blueprints and historical lessons of the building. In the middle of these pages are the drink descriptions showing off clearly the ingredients and then handwritten sketches of the drinks and bar notes. It's so cool and brilliant. My only notes would be that a.) it's super dark / have your phone light handy and b.) some things like pricing are hard to find and the add ons are a little eclectic / needed further clarity from the server.

Let's talk drinks which range from $20 - $80 (these more expensive drinks usually are for multiple people). A seasonal menu is also included. Let's break down a couple of the drinks I tried:

*Light Me Up: My favorite drink. Complex and delicious. It's a bourbon cocktail that mixed together mango black tea, pineapple, Szechuan peppercorn, amaro amongst other ingredients. You can taste the booze but its strong mix of ingredients made for a wonderful drink that was hard to put down. *Mexican Hot Chocolate: I unfortunately don't remember the official name of the drink but chose off the seasonal menu. On the pro side, the top is melted marshmallow which is so gooey and delicious. This drink was super booze-y if that's what you're looking for and was just a wee bit heavy as my last drink unfortunately.

Kudos to the 1-2 front desk ladies who seemed to be doing double-duty as front of house as well as servers! Super friendly. And it was actually possible to have steady conversations here. Highly...

Signed up to attend the cocktail making class at Patent Pending they host and had 13 of us attending. Our assigned bartender was very nice and friendly, but seems could have been organized a lot better to facilitate the class. When we arrived he offered to make everyone welcome drinks which he clarified weren't part of our 3 cocktails to be taught, and spent a while making everyone individual drinks (which probably could have just been a pour of a mini-martini or something that could have been prepped before the class).

Since there were 13 of us in total, a few of us approached the bar to learn our first drink but he thought it'd be nice to personalize the experience and make individual drinks for everyone — he taught a 1:1 for the first two folks before I had to interrupt and ask for groups of at least 4-5 to be taught because we had burned through 20 min of our time for just two people on 1 cocktail each. Then came the problem of him only having 3 cocktail shakers total for us to use, so we were limited on how many people could make a drink at any given point. He was able to borrow another from the front bar and we finally started doing rounds of 4 people making the same cocktail which made things smoother and quicker.

The class ultimately ended in 8 people getting to make 2 cocktails each and 5 people only getting to make 1 cocktail total. This was a far cry from the 3 cocktails we were told we would learn how to make. I chalk a lot of this up to the tiny bar space, the structure of the class, and the limited tools to work with. It was a fun experience overall, but insanely difficult to justify the *$265/pp price tag (after tax and tip) * when we walked away. Hope this feedback can be constructive and warning to other people signing up. Really enjoy the bar, but was hugely disappointed by this experience with them. I reached out to them after this experience and...