Sunken Harbor Club — Restaurant in New York

Sunken Harbor is a 5/5 when it comes to the quality of the drinks. Garret Richard and the others designing drinks here do a wonderful job of things like acid balancing fruit juices, finding perfect layering of flavors, and presenting in a vibrant manner. The Zombie was impeccable and almost to Latitude 29 levels. I knew to expect quality drinks going in, but what I didn't really expect what to be let down by every other aspect of the experience. Service: The bad experiences started when the harried hostess took us up the stairs, pointed into an area behind beads which looked very much like a kitchen and said, "sit there". Both my wife and I saw her point us into this area (not the nearby stools) and flabbergasted, dutifully followed her lead. Immediately she vanished and a hostile Grouch Marx'd bartender Dan appeared with his mustache bristling and very loud "CAN I HELP YOU?!" I tried to explain what had happened with the hostess, but he clearly didn't realize that such carelessness from her end could be possible. Defusing with humor from my end about the mixup was also met with hostility. After this point I watched Dan for the rest of the evening from my perch and never saw a single smile cross his self-serious visage. This hostile and cool nature would exude from everyone we encountered on the staff. Once we figured out that there were some tiny seats by the kitchen barrier we seated ourselves. Awhile later, a very distracted and aloof server appeared and re-appeared to take our order. I asked him a question about a recommendation for my wife, but while staring off into the rest of the room he straight up ignored everything I said. Eventually he faced back to us and I gave up and hurriedly placed an order, yelling it out over the speaker sitting above me. There was so little warmth, so little humor, and so little life in this individual that i had to wonder what in the hell was going on with staff here that everyone had this contempt going on. I watched every interaction around the place I could and they were all like this - though I don't think the drunken clientele noticed. I'm very friendly and outgoing and love interacting with people in restaurants and bars, but have never really encountered such absolute stereotypes of everything that is wrong with Brooklyn hipster culture. Ambiance: Now we come to the absolute worst aspect of this place. The owners of this have decided that "Tiki" is problematic (rather than the reality of it being a loving and perhaps silly homage to beloved Polynesian cultures) and so have stripped anything related to that out of the place other than a single lei perched awkwardly to the side of the room. The bar itself and the art backing it is sensationally beautiful and cannot be faulted. Otherwise they have decided that dour Long John Silvers style ropes and nets and ship bits are a better way of conveying tropical than anything which could remotely be considered happy or warm. Aesthetics aside - lets' get to what will really pain you. A good bar is a place where conversation and drinks and happiness flow from attention to detail. You CANNOT have that when you have insanely loud music blaring from tinny speakers. The music itself was a lot of annoying pastiches of retro rock and roll one might associate with island life, but its intolerable volume and the sheer mediocrity of the playlist just shattered any sense of well-being or peace. It dominated everything and placed the bar itself in a low-tier unsophisticated party bracket. Places like Latitude 29 in NO nail the little details so much better. They are warm, happy places filled with good people and amazing drinks and food. Even moody dark places like the gold standard Death and Company have beauty and warmth in their design. Sunken Harbor is not immersive. Have you been on ships which hurt your ears with second rate generic rockabilly - where people who take themselves far too seriously view the...

Ever wanted to drink in an old pirate ship but can’t make it out to Anaheim, Phoenix or San Fran? Sunken Harbor is for you. Seriously though, we finally made the pilgrimage to SH in Brooklyn, last week, and couldn’t have been happier.

We arrived just as the place was opening and realized that we might be in for a wait as there was already a line waiting to get into the hidden bar. Everyone at the front desk was friendly and they took our number and told us to expect an hour wait. Nobody batted an eye when we took up refuge in the corner (it was cold outside), and we were greeted with a text telling us our table was ready about 40 minutes after check in.

The bar is located above another fancy restaurant and holds maybe 35-40 people max. The whole place is designed like an old ship, with tons of amazing woodwork and nautical stylings.

Even though the place eschews the term tiki, you know you are in the right place when you see the Tiki Ti and Frankies Tiki Room stickers behind the bar. Speaking, of the bar, drinks were flawless. I had a traditional mai tai and it was a perfect melding of rum and sweetness, without the oppressive taste of cheap liquor. I didn’t have the food, as we were not able to stay too long, but they had an impressive menu of apps.

Sadly, there were no mugs available for sale, but they did offer some fancy zombie and Mai tai glasses, as well as pins.

I know Brooklyn is a haul, but we were able to find free street parking on a Saturday night,

Highly recommend this place to anyone that wants a perfectly made...

I really loved this place! It's been 3 weeks and I want to go back. There was a line outside about 15 deep, 10 minutes before open (it's extremely small inside). Whenever I go out I try to find the places that offer things which I ordinarily wouldn't get anywhere else. I don't know why, but every aspect of the sunken boat vibe of this place is just simply incredible, and the back bar is just amazing. Having been to hundreds and hundreds of places, this one is definitely unique (and in a good way!)

The drinks are very well made and of course the menu skews towards Tiki style. I usually don't care for Tiki because it's an excuse for many bars to use cheap ingredients and hide it as a sugar bomb in a pretty glass. However, I can tell that these drinks are extremely complex and using the proper blends of the right rums--I'd fly back to NYC and have their drinks any day. My wife and I were going to just have one drink as we had dinner reservations elsewhere, but I dared to squeeze three into me, easily.

I gotta point out that this place is only a 30 minute walk from Christopher Wallace's childhood home, so if you don't know, now ya know. This was my first time in NYC, but as a historian I love how Brooklyn is quite notorious for BIG things. I'm sure by now you can tell that this place just hypnotizes me, and I just love their flashy ways and hope Sunken Harbor is here to stay.

For reals, I'd pay $15 just to have a glass of water at Sunken Harbor. Thanks...