Bar, Pub, Gastro-Pub
http://thegrowlernyc.com/
55 Stone Street – Financial District

The Growler is located on historic Stone Street in downtown Manhattan.  It is a pedestrian-only cobblestone street lined with restaurants and bars.  In the summer, all of the establishments place tables out in the street.  It gets a bit packed.  Generally, this street is very busy on weeknights based on its close proximity to Wall Street.  Enough said there.  However, on the weekends, it is a lovely and relatively mellow area for the locals.

The name Growler is a double entendre.  Growler implies dog and also a container of beer, usually 1/2 gallon to a gallon.  The concept is really quite clever.  The dog theme carries throughout with a nice selection of ‘dogs’ on the menu.  Also, bone marrow.  Cute and up with the current trend at the same time.  They have a nice selection of craft beers as well as daily casked cocktails and beer.  The drink menu is a nice list of sophisticated cocktails with dog names. Lastly, they offer growlers to go if you want to take home beer.  We also heard in warm weather you can tie your dog outside and they’ll provide water and treats.  Dog friendly does not mean your pal can hang with you at the bar, however, since we know that is a DOH violation :).

The upstairs bar runs the full depth of the block, with entrances on both Stone Street and South William Street. There are tables on the S. William Street end and it gets narrower toward the Stone St. entrance with a bar height counter and stools running along the opposite side of the bar.   The bar is decorated with little paper covered votives with great dog quotes.  I’m rather fond of my pic.  Downstairs, there’s another small bar.  It is a nice spot for private parties, which I am sure the Wall Street guys arrange regularly.

We tried the daily cask punch, which was called ‘Dead Rabbit Punch,’ perhaps a nod to Dead Rabbit, the next bar opening in the Harry Poulakakos downtown empire.  For those not local to the area, Harry and many combinations of partners own a large amount of bars and restaurants in the Financial District.  Nice decor and good food are trademarks of the group.  Among them are Harry’s, Financier, Adrienne’s Pizza Bar, Ulysses, Harry’s Italian Pizza Bar, and Vintry Wine & Whiskey.  One of his partners, Frank Casano has additional ventures to include Nelson Blue, Inatteso Pizzabar Casano and Stella in the South Street Seaport nearby.  Harry is also developing  Pier A in Battery Park.

A little digression there!  Now back to the drinks and food.  The cask punch had a bit of a kick.  Of course the many beer tastes following may have contributed to my buzz!  There are about 20 beers on tap, many of which are from the tri-state area.   We had Growler Brrright made by Stoudt’s from PA, a Crispin Cider, and a Lagunitas Censored Cask among others.

Lagunitas Censored Cask

The Growler serves Mile End hot dogs with your choice of toppings.  They even do ‘Chicago Style’ with tomatoes, pickled sport peppers and celery salt.  After our recent trip, I was tempted.  But I tried the Lamb Mergues instead, which is a spicy lamb sausage.  It was topped with a tzatziki sauce (cucumber yogurt sauce w/dill) which was such a nice compliment to the spice.

Steve went with a Classic Dog  and piled on a combo of sauerkraut, onions, mustard and relish for $6.  A great bonus – every dog comes on a saltless pretzel bun.  Yum.

We also had a grilled ham steak with baked beans and a red skin potato salad.    It was an amazing value at $10!  I also saw LES Fried Pickles which have to be awesome.  We’ll go back and try a few more ‘Bites.’

Lastly, I must mention our bartender Tom.  He was very friendly, offered great recommendations and he was very knowledgeable about NYC.  We spoke extensively about restaurants and discovered he lived in Boston for 10 years.  We are planning another city weekend getaway and he provided us with a list of places to try.  This morning we booked our trip and are checking out the restaurants now.  After our Chicago Moto experience, we are going to avoid any meals that could potentially break the $500 mark!  Look for the Boston reviews in March.  I’ll add links later!

Overall, we had a great time at The Growler.  We may even become regulars.  We’ve not been big fans of Stone Street bars in the past, so this was a really nice addition to the neighborhood.
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