Decide Whether You're Here for the Martini or the Basement
The Grand Army alums behind the Dirty Dog Martini took over the old Black Flamingo space in Williamsburg and built a savory cocktail bar with a dive underneath. Both are worth your time. Pick one before you walk in.
The Greek Salad Tini arrives with dollops of oregano floating on top, and it tastes like exactly what it says on the menu — piparra brine, Tomato Crop vodka, something vegetal doing the work the olive juice usually does. This is the drink Patty Dennison and Ally Marrone want you to order first, and the one that tells you what kind of bar they've opened on Borinquen Place.
Dennison and Marrone met at Grand Army, spent time at Blacktail, and became known in the wider bar world for the Dirty Dog Martini before opening this room in the former Ensenada and Black Flamingo space in Williamsburg. Kinda Nice opened in May 2026 upstairs; Shenanigans, the dive bar directly beneath it, opens two nights a week. The upstairs is where the savory cocktail programme lives. The downstairs is where the night gets longer. Most reviews cover one and miss the other.
A savory cocktail bar built around the Dirty Dog Martini, with a two-nights-a-week dive hidden underneath it.
Editorial Deep
The house move is savory, and the Greek Salad Tini is the drink that proves it works. Tomato Crop vodka and piparra brine build a martini that reads more like the plate the name promises than like a novelty cocktail — earthy, briny, vegetal, oregano scattered across the surface like a garnish someone thought about. The only savory martini in the neighborhood that would survive a blind tasting against the room's straight vodka orders.
From the street it's still recognizably the Black Flamingo doorway, and the sign gives you nothing about what's upstairs or what's underneath. Push through and the room opens into mustard-colored diner booths and leather banquettes running the walls, a bar you post up at when the booths fill, and lighting pitched low enough that the drinks photograph better than the faces around them. The old dance-floor bones are still under the paint.
Weeknights read local — Williamsburg regulars, industry stopping in after their shifts, couples on second drinks. Fridays and Saturdays the room tightens, groups take the banquettes early, and the volume climbs toward the point where you're shouting orders across the table. The crowd is the product here, not the cost: nobody's waiting for your seat with visible impatience, and the tables next to yours are having the same night you are.
The deviled eggs at bar-snack pricing punch above their weight. The cocktails hold the line, but the absence of any early-evening pricing is what caps the value read.
The night that rewards this place is a Friday: post up upstairs around seven with the Greek Salad Tini and the burger, work through the Frozen Cherry Cola and the Guava Negroni, and drop downstairs to Shenanigans when it opens at eight. That's the version of this bar most first-time visitors miss entirely, and it's the reason to come back. The one to skip is the quiet Tuesday solo drink — the room is built for groups, and drinking alone at the bar on a slow night is a thinner experience than what Dennison and Marrone built the space to do.
Order this
Drink this.
Greek Salad Tini, Frozen Cherry Cola, the burger or the fried chicken sandwich
“Go for the Greek Salad Tini and stay for Shenanigans downstairs.”
The savory cocktail programme delivers — the Greek Salad Tini and the Guava Negroni are legitimately distinctive drinks, and the fried chicken sandwich outperforms every bar-food expectation you're bringing in. But the reason to build a night here is Shenanigans, the Friday-and-Saturday-only dive bar directly downstairs from the same owners. Kinda Nice upstairs is the polished cocktail room, Shenanigans downstairs is where the night stretches, and coming on a Tuesday and missing the basement is coming to the wrong bar. Show up on a weekend, order the martini and the burger upstairs by seven, and go down when the door opens at eight.
The Verdict
