Enter through Saxon + Parole's restaurant and let them know you're looking for The Poni Room. The name is the secret code word to enter a subterranean seated bar and restaurant, with a totally separate menu from the upstairs East Village mainstay.
The Poni Room is loosely aquatic-themed, with seashell decor details, napkins that look like sails, and water and wine served from fish jugs. Going along with the theme, the menu— a collaboration between Chef Brad Farmerie and Chef Nicole Gajadhar— focuses on elevated bar snacks in the form of seafood skewers and small plates. Uni toast, smoked salmon with trout roe, avocado, cucumber and shichimi togarashi rice chips, coconut laksa with crab, scallop skewers with sweet chili sauce, and lobster bao buns, as well as a few meat offerings like sesame soy-braised lotus root and crispy pork belly with cucumber, chili-caramel, mint and cilantro.
Though The Poni Room will have cocktails of all varieties, they specialize in an extensive rosé program—a roster of 20 different wines— that's interactive. Guests can actually head to the wine cellar and select what they think looks best, as opposed to abstractly trying to guess from opaque menu descriptions.
