Check the Themed Menu Before You Book
A Boerum Hill cocktail bar where the drinks list rotates on a theme and the food menu is almost entirely seafood. Ten years in and still one of the most confident rooms in the neighborhood.
Grand Army makes its argument with seafood first. The seafood is the room's opening move, the cocktail list is what keeps you sitting through a second round, and the whole thing runs on a rotating themed menu that changes what you order every few months. The tenth-anniversary menu is built around the MTA — subway lines as cocktails — and it is worth checking what theme is running before you go, because the drink you came for last time is not the drink on the list this time.
Damon Boelte opened the place on State Street in 2015 and it has held its ground on a corner of Boerum Hill that has turned over around it. It is not a cocktail temple and it is not a seafood restaurant. It is a neighborhood bar that takes both halves of the job seriously, and the discipline shows.
A cocktail bar that treats oysters as the opening argument, and a themed drinks list that quietly changes what you came in to order.
Editorial Deep
The list rotates on a theme — subway lines for the tenth-anniversary menu, something else the next time you're in — and it is the identity of the bar more than any single drink is. Check what's running before you book, because building your evening around a cocktail you remember from last winter is how you end up ordering blind at the bar.
From the sidewalk on State Street it reads as almost nothing — a corner door, a name in modest type, no queue spilling out. Inside is warmer and more considered than the exterior lets on: local art on the walls, a long bar that seats a real crowd, and enough table seating along the side to make it work for two people who want to talk.
Boerum Hill locals early, a wider Brooklyn draw after nine, and enough industry regulars to keep the bartenders honest. It fills reliably on Friday and Saturday from around 7pm and holds until close, but it is rarely the kind of loud that makes you lean in to hear the person next to you. This is a room where the crowd raises the temperature without taking it over, which is a harder thing to engineer than it sounds.
The common note in the reviews — that it runs a touch expensive even for the quality — is fair. The oysters are the value; the towers are the splurge; the cocktails sit exactly where they should.
The best version of this bar is a Tuesday or Wednesday at 5:30pm: two people, a dozen oysters, one cocktail each off the current themed list, then a second round to decide whether to stay for a small plate or move on. Come back for that. Come back for a birthday four-top and a seafood tower if the occasion calls for it. Don't come here for a rowdy Saturday session with six people who don't care what's on the menu — the room rewards attention, and the bill punishes indifference.
Order this
Drink this.
A dozen oysters at happy hour and the Gully Jumper off the standing set
“Go for oysters at happy hour and one round off the themed list.”
Grand Army works best as a two-person, bar-seat evening built around the happy-hour oyster deal and a cocktail off whichever seasonal theme is running. It is not the cheapest cocktail bar in Brooklyn and it is not the deepest raw bar either — but the pairing of the two, at this level of care, is rare. Skip it for a big group with a loose plan; the bill runs away and the room doesn't reward the energy. Book a table on Resy, or walk in for the bar on a weeknight before 7pm.
The Verdict
