Eli's Night Shift

A New York food fixture for four decades, restaurateur Eli Zabar now partners with son Oliver for the first time to expand the Zabar’s empire with this drinks den moonlighting in the Upper East Side grocery-café Eli’s Essentials. After unveiling a similar wine concept at the 91st Street location of Essentials earlier in 2015, Zabar switches gears to beer, with 10 rotating brews—many from homegrown operations like Queens’ Big Alice Brewing and the Bronx’s Gun Hill Brewery—on tap, poured through nozzles protruding from a menu-scrawled chalkboard. The zinc-topped counter also offers cocktails like the Eli’s Flourish (amontillado sherry, mescal) and a Gin and Bare It (botanist gin, Concord grape shrub) made by head barman Nathan Gurr (the Handy Liquor Bar). Comfort-food standards balance the booze: Pigs in a blanket rolls house-made franks in fresh puff pastry, while pastrami sandwiches bookend meat cured on-site with daily-baked rye bread