Loycent Gordon Kept the Doors Open on the Oldest Bar in Queens
A 197-year-old Woodhaven tavern that almost closed in January 2020, saved by its owner and a neighborhood committee. The Goodfellas connection is real. So is the burger.
The tin ceiling is the first thing to look up at. Then the antique lamps, then the tap system that has been pouring beer since long before any of the current regulars were born. Neir's has occupied the corner of 78th Street and 88th Avenue in Woodhaven since 1829, which makes it older than the state of Michigan and every other bar in New York City that still claims to be pouring drinks in its original room.
Loycent Gordon, a Jamaican-born owner who took the place over and then almost lost it in January 2020, runs it now with the Neir's 190 Committee that formed in 2019 to keep the doors open. The reprieve came at the last minute. What Gordon has built since is a functioning neighborhood bar in Queens that happens to have hosted Mae West's early shows and a Goodfellas shoot — not a themed tribute to either.
The oldest claim in New York belongs to a working Woodhaven room, not a museum and not a movie set.
Editorial Deep
The house move is the Neir's Old Fashioned, built on a recipe the tavern dates to 1895. It is a straight-ahead old fashioned made competently — sugar, bitters, whiskey, a twist — not a reinterpretation and not trying to be. The Mae West Punch does more of the work if you want something with a story attached: whiskey and rum with lemon, pineapple, and ginger ale, named for the performer who cut her teeth on the stage here. The Wise Guy is the one bartenders steer regulars toward when they ask what's good.
Look up. The tin ceiling is original, the antique lamps throw the kind of low warm light that flatters a corner booth at ten p.m., and the tap system is the one the bar has been running for generations — not restored to look old but old because it never stopped working. The main room splits into a bar side and a dining side, both wearing their 19th-century bones openly. Nothing has been staged. Nothing has been distressed on purpose.
The crowd is Woodhaven. Regulars who have been coming for decades, families eating burgers on a Friday, the occasional Goodfellas pilgrim who has done their homework and figured out this is a functioning bar rather than a photo op. The tourist share is smaller than you would expect for a room with this much film credit. Movie fans who arrive expecting a theme restaurant tend to have one drink and leave; the regulars stay, and the room settles back into itself within an hour. The energy is warm, low, and conversational rather than loud. This is a bar where the crowd is what the room is for, not what you tolerate to be in it.
The move is the Goodfella Burger with fries, a proper cocktail on the side, and the honest neighborhood-tavern bill that follows.
Come back on a weekday evening when the dining side has thinned and the bar is running on regulars. That is the version of Neir's that justifies the trip out — not the weekend rush and not the Goodfellas-tour hour, but a slow Tuesday around nine with the Old Fashioned in front of you and the tin ceiling doing what it has done since 1829. The people who should not make the return trip are the ones who came the first time for the movie. If Ray Liotta is the reason you are here, one visit is the correct number.
Order this
Drink this.
Neir's Old Fashioned; Goodfella Burger Deluxe
“Go for the room, the burger, and 197 years of pouring by the tavern's own count. Not for cocktail bartending as a discipline.”
Neir's claims the oldest continuous operation of any bar in New York City, a claim other rooms contest, and Loycent Gordon has kept it working as a neighborhood tavern rather than converting it into a Goodfellas theme restaurant — which is the reason to go. The Old Fashioned is competent, the Goodfella Burger is good, and the tin ceiling and antique lamps do the atmospheric work without anyone having to distress a beam. Skip it if you want a serious cocktail program; that lives in Manhattan or Williamsburg. Go on a weeknight, sit at the bar, and let the room work.
The Verdict
