Eighteen Dollars for a Dive Bar Cocktail on Chrystie Street
The bar leans into the dive-bar look and charges cocktail-bar prices. Once you know that, it's a good night.
The Stevie Ray arrives in a rocks glass at $18, tequila and pineapple and a pinch of spice, and it is very good. It is also priced like a serious cocktail bar, which is worth saying out loud before anyone gets to the door on Chrystie thinking this is a place to drink cheap.
Ray's is a Lower East Side bar from Golden Age Hospitality — the Jon Neidich group, with Justin Theroux and Taavo Somer on the ownership sheet — that dresses itself in dive-bar signalling: pool table, booths, drinks named after Stevie Ray Vaughan and Ray Liotta and the Duke brothers from Trading Places, house cocktails at eighteen dollars. Take the room on its actual terms and it works. Take it on its marketed terms and the bill will land wrong.
Ray's is a cocktail bar wearing a dive bar's clothes, and the drinks are good enough that the costume stops mattering by round two.
Editorial Deep
The Stevie Ray is the one to order — Codigo Silver, pineapple, lime, agave, spicy bitters, $18, and the balance is dialled. The Marga-Ray-Ta at the same price is a straight mezcal margarita done well, Su Casa mezcal with lime and agave and nothing else in the way. The Ray Liotta at $14 is the value pick: Miller High Life, Aperol, lemon, which sounds like a stunt and drinks like a shandy that knows what it's doing.
Conversation at a normal volume is possible until about 9pm and then it isn't. The music runs loud and the room is small enough that once the booths fill, the standing area between the bar and the pool table becomes the whole social life of the place. The booths at the front are the seats to have — reservable on Resy with a 90-minute hold, which is the single most useful thing to know about coming here.
Weeknights before 8pm the room is neighbourhood — LES residents on happy hour, a couple of dates in the booths, someone racking up on the pool table. After 10pm on a Friday or Saturday it flips into a going-out crowd, louder and younger and drinking faster, and the booths become the only way to hold a conversation. The staff are friendly and attentive across both versions, which is not always true of a room this busy. The crowd is the reason to arrive at 6 and the reason to leave at 11.
The Ray Liotta at $14 is the release valve — a round of those keeps the night sensible. The happy hour running every day until 8pm (until 6pm on weekends) is the honest way in; the drinks are the same, the price isn't. The one thing on the bill that reads over is the $18 frozen category, where the ingredients don't justify the parity with the Stevie Ray.
Come back on a Wednesday at 6pm, take a booth booked on Resy, order the Stevie Ray and the Ray Liotta and rack up on the pool table before the room turns over. That is the best version of this bar. The version to skip is Saturday at 11pm expecting a dive-bar tab — the drinks are the same, the wait is longer, and the bill will feel like a bait-and-switch even though nothing has changed but the hour.
Order this
Drink this.
Stevie Ray ($18); Ray Liotta ($14) for the value pick; espresso martini on tap
“Cocktail-bar drinks at cocktail-bar prices in a dive-bar costume. Book a booth, arrive before 8, and the math works.”
Ray's is a good cocktail bar dressed as a dive, from a hospitality group that knows exactly what it is doing. The drinks are strong, the room is committed to its look, and the crowd shifts from neighbourhood to going-out around 9pm. Come before 8pm on a weeknight, book a front booth on Resy, and lean on the $14 Ray Liotta and the $18 Stevie Ray. Avoid Saturday at 11pm unless a queue is the plan — nothing changes but the hour.
The Verdict
