The Crown Inn — Restaurant in New York

Crown Inn often has a really great selection of interesting beers and wine with mostly reasonable cocktail prices. They have a sizeable backyard for the nicer months. The staff is great - really warm and inviting.

The layout, space planning and design are awful. This bar gets packed - and it is most every weekend. When you get even a slight crowd in Crown Inn the front and back of the bar are basically inaccessible, one from the other. The restrooms, majority of the bar frontage and seating are all located exactly where the bottle neck occurs. So you can never get a drink, you're constantly sidling people and apologizing for stepping on their toes. The only place worse on Franklin, in terms of space planning, is Chavela's down the block.

Don't get me wrong, I like Crown and I'll go back. And it's great they are doing well for themselves with how packed they are. But, hot damn, do they need to move some things around to make the place habitable.

Bottom line, if you don't like awkwardly packed bars, avoid Crown Thursday through Saturday.

Oh and they used to have a cool sandwich pop-up in the back. That was cool....

I recently took a date to the Crown Inn after passing it every time I walked home from the Franklin 4 subway stop. The weather was unnaturally warm so I discovered that they also have a back patio which is large enough to fit several parties without sitting on top of one another. The interior has perfect what I like to tern as "date lighting" - light enough to see your beer and their highlights and dark enough to hide all your fidgets and their facial flaws. And if you start making out in the corner, you wont stick out under the usual bar inspection-type lighting. The bar itself is long and staked with great craft beers - but be careful of some of the locals on tap, they can be pretty pricey, and served in a wine like tasting glass, which as a beer drinker, made me feel too ladylike and little uncomf. But hey, to each their own. All the bartenders are wonderful, tatted, and usually bearded and make for wonderful conversation on any night of the week. Eric is the coolest so say hit to him and ask him how his band is doing while youre there. Easy one of my favorite Crown Heights...

I had a really nice time here! Everyone is very nice and friendly and it’s very welcoming. However, the girl at the bar was very, very nasty, not the girl who wears the pink hair but the slender one with the tattoos. She worked Friday May 10th. She was very rude and nasty. I felt like she was prejudice because of the remark she stated to me. I had a whole soda in a glass and my man had 2 beers sitting right in front of me, we turned our heads for a second and she threw all of our drinks out just that fast and when I lifted my arm up to get her attention she stated “DON’T REACH FOR ME! I DONT LIKE TO BE REACHED FOR!!!” She said it very angrily and nasty and loud and others heard it as well! I wish I would’ve thought to get her name so that I could’ve posted it. I would’ve asked for a manager but didn’t want to cause a scene since everyone else...