Schmuck Is (Finally) Open in NYC!

A peek inside the bar on its opening night.

It’s fair to say that Schmuck has been the most anticipated bar in the country, if not the world.

And it has been for more than a year.

The Schmuck team, of course, has been well-known in the cocktail world for quite some time, renowned for creating incredibly sophisticated, high-concept cocktails (PectinX! Foam! Drinks with cheese!) in what they called their “five-star dive bars” in Barcelona.

The flagship concept, Two Schmucks, was awarded the seventh-place spot on the 50 Best list in 2022.

And then, just one day later, the team infamously imploded. A bad business deal had been made; a venture capitalist did what venture capitalists do. Founder and creative director Moe Aljaff departed, and nearly the entire bar team left along with him.

Moe and Juliette Larouy, the former bar manager at Two Schmucks, spent the following year hopping around the world, doing popups and residencies in Miami, Dubai, Austin, seemingly everywhere.

And then in October 2023, they announced a permanent home—in NYC!—and an upcoming bar.

Last spring, the team held a two-month-long residency in NYC, in the “hidden bar” within Back Bar at the Hotel Eventi, as a sort of preview of their bar-in-progress. While there, they teased cocktails from their upcoming space and displayed a mood board of their inspirations for it on an easel.

It was an exciting preview. And then we waited. And waited. As at a restaurant that’s otherwise great but keeps you waiting for far too long between courses, feelings among the city’s cocktail-loving community seemed to collectively oscillate between anticipation and frustration. When would Schmuck open?

Moe and Juliette, to their credit, provided frequent updates via social media in the meantime. The bar’s opening was delayed for one of the usual NYC reasons: contractor issues (we’ve all heard nightmare stories, if not experienced them ourselves). They decided to turn the bar into a DIY project, from the coffered ceiling to the bar stools.

And now, finally, at long last, as of last night, Schmuck is finally open!

What’s it like? you’re probably wondering.

The first thing to know is that Schmuck is, in fact, currently two different spaces. There’s the main room (or the “living room”), which is seated-only; be prepared for a wait unless you’ve queued in advance or nabbed a scarce table on Resy. And there’s a much smaller room, the “kitchen table” (you’ll see why), which is more casual and much louder, with one enormous communal table plus a few additional seats and some standing room; it serves as kind of a holding area or casual drop-in spot for now.

The two rooms have entirely separate menus. The one in the kitchen table room features several cocktails from the Back Bar pop-up. Did you like the Strawberry & Cheese drink? The banana one? Melon, Cheese & Pepper? (I did.) Those three make an appearance here once again, plus new drinks including Pumpkin & Cumin and “Mouthwash de Menthe.” What’s actually in any of them? No clue. The menu states the drinks’ names and nothing more.

But let’s focus on the main room.

I never got the chance to go to any of the team’s “five-star dive bars” in Barcelona. But I don’t think anyone would categorize this spot as a dive bar, or anything close to it; it instead feels like a comfortable hangout spot. The décor leans late-midcentury-modern, with mismatched vintage seating and light fixtures (“It feels like you’re drinking inside a Herman Miller showroom,” someone commented to me); wood paneling here and there gives it all kind of the vibe of a ’70s basement where the coolest parents in town might have stashed their castoff then-out-of-fashion ’60s designer furniture. It’s not as louche and punk-influenced as the mood board at the Back Bar preview might have had many believe. It’s more a cozy neighborhood bar—if your neighborhood is somewhere in Scandinavia.

Schmuck’s team moves gracefully but efficiently behind the bar; watching them is a treat. Even when the room is at full capacity (which I imagine it will be constantly), movements are fluid and unhurried; time is taken but not wasted. I didn’t see the sort of dancing behind the bar that I did at the Back Bar residency and other popups by the team; this isn’t the same party-every-night vibe, at least not yet—it’s more akin to a dinner party thrown by someone with Martha Stewart-level expertise in hosting. The music here is unobtrusive, the noise levels moderate, the lighting not so dim you can’t read the menu. It’s a more mature-feeling vibe, and perhaps a more universally welcoming one.

The tightly edited list of nine cocktails plus a non-alc option means the drinks menu is easy to get through over the course of a visit or two with friends, but enough of the cocktails are worth ordering a second time (or more) to provide a reason for repeat visits.

There are a couple of identifiable familiar classics—a martini, a paloma—that are a little more advanced than the usual version. (The paloma is “buttered”; the martini is just a little bit more everything than the standard rendition.)

Most of the others are culinarily inspired: a drinkable winter salad here, a liquid pan de tomate there, a take on a Ramos gin fizz that flawlessly emulates a passion fruit macaron. I’m told one drink is a take on Juliette’s usual breakfast in the South of France, while the Larb Gai (an eerily accurate representation of the Thai dish, flavor-wise, from the herbs to the peanuts) was apparently inspired by a dish Moe ate every day while in Thailand.

The drinks are unusual, yet approachable; none will scare off a cocktail novice, but all are advanced enough to be appreciated by serious cocktail nerds. Be advised, though, that the focus on these high-level cocktails means that the back bar is limited. If you’re looking to order something off-menu, this is not the bar for that. There are plenty of other spots in a one-block radius that can execute such a request; go to one of those other places instead.

Between the exquisite drinks and the gracious service, it all adds up to what this team does best: taking the near-impossible and executing it so flawlessly that it appears deceptively easy. New York is lucky to have this bar.

Schmuck is located at 97 First Ave. at E. 6th St. Limited reservations are available on Resy; walk-ins are welcomed, but be prepared for a lengthy wait. No website.