Nico de Soto's Spice Cabinet on West 8th Street
The Greenwich Village bar where every cocktail is built around one herb or spice, and where a 4pm arrival unlocks a menu the reservation crowd never sees.
The menu arrives as a leather-bound book with hand-drawn illustrations, one page per cocktail, each built around a single herb or spice. Basil. Tonka. Pandan. Habanero. It reads less like a drinks list and more like the index of a serious cookbook, which is more or less what it is.
Mace is the New York bar Nico de Soto runs with Greg Boehm on West 8th Street, in the block of Greenwich Village that most people cut through on the way to somewhere else. It made the World's 50 Best Bars at No. 28 in 2016 and has been on and off the lists since.
The rare cocktail bar where the ingredient list on the menu is the whole point, and the drinks arrive in one piece anyway.
Editorial Deep
The programme runs across roughly a dozen cocktails, each keyed to one herb, spice, or plant. That is the frame the whole bar hangs on, and de Soto has been building it long enough that the drinks arrive as finished objects rather than experiments looking for approval. It reads as a summer soup and drinks like a cocktail. Both things at once, which is the trick.
The back wall is lined with dried flowers and herbs like a working apothecary, and the rear room holds a fireplace, live greenery, and framed pressed-herb art under a skylight. Booth seating in cushioned banquettes runs along one side; the marble bar counter faces the drink-making so you can watch the build if you sit there. Wall sconces throw the light, warm and dim without going candle-black, and the sound is old-school hip hop layered with New York jazz at a volume that lets a four-top hold a real conversation.
Weeknights before eight skew local and industry — West Village residents, off-duty bartenders comparing notes on the Basil, the occasional NYU faculty member who has figured out that the block is closer than it looks. After ten on Thursday through Saturday the room fills with a younger downtown crowd who came for the reputation and stay because the drinks hold up. The energy shifts from conversation to volume around ten-thirty on weekends, and by eleven the room is louder than a spice-driven cocktail programme deserves.
The full-price cocktails are defensible for the technique on show. The value case is the 4-to-7 window, and almost nobody uses it.
The wrong night is a Saturday at eleven with six friends and no reservation, when the group bookings have swallowed the booths and the bar itself is three deep. Book Resy for anything after nine, or arrive before six and skip the platform.
Order this
Drink this.
Basil, Tonka, Habanero
“The herb-and-spice cocktail bar that justifies its Greenwich Village address, if you time it right.”
Mace is what a spice-forward cocktail programme looks like when someone has been working on it for a decade. The Basil, Tonka, and Habanero are the three drinks that show why this bar made North America's 50 Best Bars at #18 in 2023, and the room is built for the kind of long session most cocktail bars in this tier no longer bother with. Go Tuesday at five, sit at the counter, and let the bartender pick the second round. Skip Saturday at ten unless you booked it.
The Verdict
