Dakota Roadhouse

The Wed. happy hour drinks I had with two buddies was just a blast. Being a freshly minted Dad, I have had little chance to hang out socially. But this was long over due. So for my 40^th palooza week I met up with a few buddies and celebrated mildly.
The staff seems more annoyed than friendly on Wed. Since the Bday outing above I’ve been back another time. The fun of the possibility of pulling a tab for a free beer or drink on their game cards is overshadowed by the lack of enthusiasm of the staff.
Regardless, it’s a fun spot to hit before venturing home. Thanks for the free drinks. And there is food options but never tried.

I would NOT go here or even CONSIDER supporting a business that treats their staff so terribly! Ive witnessed it. And these people are right, if you go on craigslist, this woman spends A LOT of money posting ads because she is lacks the proper skills that manager would need to manage staff effectively and therefore runs a por business. TIP to the owner: If you really want to save money, stop worrying about wasting alcohol and start worrying about your constant loss of good potential staff. At this point, you aren’t going to have anyone want to work for you because of the the way you abuse your staff which is reflected not only in the bar but also on Craigslist.

Happened upon this place by accident and totally loved it. My boyfriend and I were looking for a more low key, dive bar kind of place. This is it! Love the atmosphere, great booze selection and connect 4 to relieve your childhood! Only 4 stars because the beer selection didn’t appeal to my totally under developed beer palate and the bathrooms were a little questionable. But COMPLETELY able to compromise those two things because this place rocked!

I came here after a midterm, when I was so sure that I blew my GPA. I had passed it a million times but had never gone in. On a classmate’s recommendation, two of us came here, and I was so pleasantly surprised! I don’t really know what I expected– but the inside was much, much nicer than what I had thought it would be. I guess I expected a desolate, dark, dank, divey, douchey place. I was so wrong, so so wrong!
The inside is, like, amazingly decorated. Cool vintage signs, tall tables with neat stools, and a gleaming bar. It was so clean yet felt sooooo homey. It was atypical of a New York bar, but I cannot put my finger on why.
It’s a guy place sort of– I mean, there were construction workers and a moose head on the wall (of course I loved that). But it wasn’t a junky guy place (does that make sense?) Like, it had GREAT beers and AWESOME classic bar food (which was served, by the way, at a back counter and you by all means need to order a bunch of it as you knock back your beers) but it was just… I don’t know. So fun. The bartender was very sweet too.
BEWARE though– they have, um, adult stuff on a couple of their TVs. Not a place to take someone unless they have a sense of humor/​are not awkward. That cost them a star. Sorry, guys. Time and place. Maybe have that stuff during certain hours? (Like, not 3:30 PM on a Wednesday?)
One more lost star is due to the fact that they don’t accept credit cards. BUT they do reimburse you for the ATM fees.
I’d come back though, especially since I hear that there’s a dog that walks around!

Drinks were fine until my burger and fries arrive and there is some little blond hair in it. Then I see a dog roaming the place. Sent back the food and got my money back. I will never come back. Soo rude and unsanitary !!

Not too shabby of a spot in the financial district near WTC.
Met up with Erskine S. on our way out of the city and decided to grab a few drinks. It was Wednesday (who drinks on a Wednesday?!) and the Happy Hour special until 7pm is based on a chance game — either full price ($ 6 sam adams pint beers), half price or free. I walked away with a free drink and three half off drinks… not shabby.
Food is nothing spectacular… typical unhealthy fried food and some other options. This is more of a ‘grab some drinks with a buddy after work’ type (with games!) of spot than anything involving food and craft beers.
Service was good. Wasn’t too busy as the night went on, but is generally busy earlier in the HH. There was also a bunch of sport games on the TV’s, which they were open to changing if you wanted to watch something else (aka the Yankees, not the Mets).
Erskine mentioned a few HH specials in his review… stop in here if you’re in the area and want to play a game of chance and get some drinks FO FREE.

This is my type of place… totally down to earth and kind of grungy. It definitely doesn’t fit the suit and tie/​financial district mold of the surrounding area and this is why I think Dakota is an oasis in the desert. When you show up after work they give you a card with 5 tabs on it. You peel off one tab and have the option of a full price, half price, or free drink. Its not an extensive beer selection, but it has all of the usual suspects and its cheap!
They have a pool table in the back and also a grill where you can get burgers, fries, grilled cheese, etc. However one of my favorite aspects of the bar is the dog that hangs out there. There is this golden lab that wears a vest that says «please do not feed me». Hes really low energy and just plops himself down in the back and hangs out. Inevitably people will come up and pet him but for the most he minds his own business.
I’ve never been late at night, but for me its a great after work spot since I’m in the area.

Dakota Roadhouse was my watering hole back in the day and yesterday was my first time back in a long time. It has not changed one bit. Still have TV’s hanging behind the bar showing old videos/​movies/​sports as old school music plays in the bar. The bar is very spacious with pool & fools ball tables in the back as well as upstairs. There’s also a food station on the side for you to order while throwing a few back.
Shams and I had a couple of drinks yesterday before heading home. The bartenders are very pleasant and they have this game they play with customers for happy hour on Monday’s & Wednesday’s. For every drink you purchase between the hours of 5 – 7 (PM) the bartender would give you a card with 5 choices to choose from. You can only choose one tab/​slot and your options are:
1 — You’ll get a free drink on the house if you choose the .10 cent tab.
2 — Pay half price for your drink if you choose the half price tab.
3 — You’ll have to pay full price for your drink if you choose that tab.
Tuesday’s happy hour game is the coin toss. The bartender will toss the coin for you to guess if it is heads or tails. If you choose right, you’ll get a drink on the house. Thursday’s is a bucket of beer for $ 13.00.
If you are a lover of dogs, there’s a dog named Dakota that hangs out in the bar with the customers.
DON’T forget CASH because they won’t take your credit card her.

I just died and went to 90s heaven. Seriously, the music in here brought me back to middle school and high school. Also, was that 70s porn I saw on the tv above the bar? I tried to pretend I was offended because I was with coworkers, but secretly thought it was pretty rad. Let’s not also forget that the drinks are dirt cheap. I believe I paid $ 18 for 3 vodka sodas. Patrons are kind of a mixed bag — some total sketch-​balls and even a pregnant woman sitting at the bar (not drinking, of course) and then «normal» people like us! Sure, this place is a total filthy dive, but really I think that is part of its charm.

I know this is probably going to be taken down, but if just one fellow bartender reads this I’ll be happy.
They have posts on Craigslist all the time for a reason. This is a horrible place to work. They made me work a double (10:30am to 2am) while I was still training. They wouldn’t let me go outside, and they wouldn’t let me sit down to eat. I had to ‘be quick about it’ when I asked to go to the bathroom. One of the bartenders who trained me even warned me about the manager, «she’s my friend, but she is an ice queen». Oh, some friend! The manager is nasty, condescending, and rude. Here’s a gem from her «I said carry the bank under your left arm! Not your right». Yes, that happened.
As I was signing the tax forms she told me she had been watching me pour beer incorrectly. More specifically, that I was holding the glass perpendicular instead of at an angle. Seriously (for any of you non-​bartenders, anyone who’s worked at a bar for less than a day knows how to hold a glass correctly when pouring a beer). She actually asked me if I knew how to pour beer or if she needed to teach me how to do that. Two things wrong with this. 1. Why would you hire a bartender who doesn’t know how to pour beer? OR 2. You just like being a horrible person.
I wasn’t allowed to use my bottle opener (a staple for all bartenders). I had to use the bottle openers attached to the taps. Something about bottle tops on the floor being unsanitary. You know what else is unsanitary? Having a dog running free in the bar. IT IS NOT A SERVICE DOG.
Another favorite is you have to get their okay to go out of town EVEN IF IT’S ON DAYS YOU DON’T WORK. I can’t make this up.
They also make the bartenders memorize proper answers to certain common questions; «we don’t carry Corona, but we do offer refreshing whatever-​crap-​they-​have». I can’t remember the other ones now, but I do remember they were fantastically horrible. Trying to spin crappy faux-​french wine to iron workers is not easy. If you don’t use these lines they barite you in front of the patrons.
Creepy porn. True story. I like porn, but I don’t like watching/​discussing creepy porn with drunk iron workers. Though to be fair, those guys were pretty cool. They were the only good part of the place.
The bottles are color coded for price and they have control pour tops. Control tops are so horribly difficult. Every morning you have to reset ALL of them, just in case. They really go out of their way to make you feel like an idiot.
I really can’t stress enough how nasty and mean the manager and the owner are. The manager is really a piece of work. On one of my training shifts, she was leaving so I said, «have a great night!!» She literally turned around frowned, rolled her eyes at me, and left. She hates her life, you will not be able to change that.
Run, run as fast as you can!!!

My first month in NY, my coworkers brought me here for happy hour. I love dive bars and have been to my fair share in Seattle. What I like about Dakota is people leave you alone (so if you go to bars to meet people, this is not for you). They have happy hour with drink specials and scratch tickets. Odds are pretty good that you’ll end up getting your drinks for free with the scratch. Even if you don’t win, drinks are cheap (at least during happy hour). You can see the owner and his dog, Dakota, roaming around the bar.
Food here is good. The theme is greasy deliciousness. The burger looks amazing, the popcorn chicken is well seasoned and the fries are addicting. They play really odd things on TV… a little bit on the disturbing side at times. Apart from watching train wrecks on TV, stuffing your face with bar food, there’s also a foosball table and a pool table.
I recommend it as a starting place for after-​work happy hour with non-​snooty coworkers you actually like. It’s much more fun (and cheaper) than Raccoon Lodge and not as trashy as the Patriot.

Used to walk passed this place everyday on my way home without much notice, until two days ago.
Kind of your standard almost hole in the wall type bar, but there are a few things about this place that will keep me interested to coming back more and more.
First off there is tons of space by the bar, around the bar, and in back of the bar, with booths available if you want to eat. I get claustrophobic in small bars and this is a huge plus for me
Second they have a game once in a while, where you get to flip a coin, and if you call the right side, your beer is free, and you can do this for every beer you order on certain nights/​days
Thirdly, their wings are not half bad (Crispy, with sauces on the side and made to order)
Lastly, they have one pool table at a price of 2 bucks, which never hurts for a bar to have.
Overall, cool place to go after work if you want to grab a few quick, relativly normal priced beers and hang out and talk.

There’s a dog named Dakota who owns a bar in the Financial District? Sign me up!
We came here with friends and enjoyed the laid back, dive atmosphere with 90’s hits on the jukebox. The bartender was sassy and Dakota greeted us with our drinks. There’s bar food and a standard selection of beer.
Also if you get out of hand the dog barks you out of the bar — great entertainment! Don’t forget cash as they won’t take your credit card here either.

Dakota Roadhouse seems to literally sit at the confluence of Wall Street and Main Street. This is my infrequent, after-​work drink spot and, at that time of day, the bar is equally divided between «bros» from the WTC construction site and «bros» from nearby financial firms. On the bro-​spectrum, Dakota has it’s bases covered.
Like everything else in Tribeca, it’s overpriced and feels somewhat lifeless here but relative to other nearby options the Roadhouse is acceptable for an early evening libation before being crammed into the subway for my trek home. I haven’t tried the food and have no plans to. If you are looking for a place to spend a lengthy amount of time, do yourself a favor and get on the subway — any subway, in any direction — and get out of Tribeca. If you have to be in Tribeca, Dakota Roadhouse will suffice.

Another dive bar down by the financial area that I ended up in on a Monday night bar crawl. Why do I do these things to myself on a Monday? Urghhh!
Anyway, this place is actually kinda cool with it’s huge bar and mousetraps all along it to hold your cash. It’s a divey bar playing 80’s-90’s rock. Neon glow in the dark pool table in the back. Flat screens behind the bar and all around. Small food area to get some pub type eats. There was even a cute golden retriever named Dakota hanging out in there. The friendly bartender we chatted with swore it is haunted, especially in the wee hours when she is closing up.
Pretty basic beer lineup on tap — Blue Moon, Sam Adams, Yuengling, Bud, Coors Lite, Stella, Bass, Guinness — you know the drill. At least they are served nice and cold. Cheap too.
Other then that I don’t remember much as my mind was fuzzy with booze at this point in the night. I do remember hearing some good 90’s rock playing like Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Guns & Roses, and Soundgarden. Kind of empty when we were there but at least we avoided the d-​bag wall street «bro» crowd and meat heads that I hear congregate in this place for happy hour.

Move over burger joints in New York City, I think I may have found my new love.
For my friend Kim’s birthday last month she picked Dakota Roadhouse in the Financial District for some celebratory drinks. Dakota Roadhouse is a dive bar at its finest. The bar is outfitted with a pool table, darts, projection screen showing everything from sports to cartoons, and random decorations that just don’t seem to have a place. Even better, there are some great deals:
Mondays from 5 p.m. — 7 p.m. the bartender flips a coin for whether you have to pay for your drink
Thursdays you can get a bucket of beers for $ 13
Luckily, Kim decided to have her drinks on a Thursday. Coincidence? I think not.
Dakota Roadhouse
I wasn’t expecting on getting any food but I’m glad I did. Dakota Roadhouse has a small kitchen outfitted on one side of the bar where you can get some of the most unhealthy bar food you want. I immediately jumped on a cheeseburger and onion rings.
The cheeseburger was out of this world! It was enormous and perfectly cooked, with juices overflowing. It was also loaded with lots of cheese expertly melted over the entire burger. Dakota Roadhouse also put its burgers on English muffins. This gave it a nice crunch when you bit into it which a traditional hamburger bun wouldn’t have provided — I’m a fan. The onion rings were also delicious. They were a good size and the fried coating was very flaky, something I love about onion rings at certain places. While the burger probably wasn’t the healthiest thing I could have eaten, the onion rings most certainly were not. When I finished them there was a clear puddle of oil and grease at the bottom of the basket they came in. Slightly off-​putting but some more $ 13 buckets of beer quickly helped me forget about it.

Should be a better bar. Games, food (till 4am), flip for free drinks, big screen.
However, i have never had a good time here. The crowd is overall the worst in the neighborhood (maybe second worst next to the Patriot). Also, in the 10 times or so i’ve been to the Dakota, there has been a new bartender each time. Asking around it seems that the turnover rate for staff is unbelievably high. This can only mean that the management doesn’t know how to hire… or is incompetent. Too bad, it is a good space and really should be a better bar.

In 5 years of working in Tribeca, I’ve stopped in the Dakota Roadhouse a few times. The bad outweighs the good here, but I’ll list everything just for show.
The Good:
Happy Hours — They rotate the specials and the games they play where you can get a free draft. Last time I played it was a version of bingo, it was fun and I got a few free beers.
Music — The dream of the 90s is alive in Dakota Roadhouse. Hell yeah. Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Chili Peppers, etc. etc.
Bar Food — Unhealthy and probably dirty but very good stuff. Good burgers and fries. Then again, how hard is it to mess that up?
Bartenders: I’ve mostly had good, fast, service here.
The Mascot: Big ol’ wonderful, friendly dog. It’s awesome.
The Bad:
Douchebags — Tons and tons of douchebags, and you get two types! First is normally a bunch of greasy construction workers who assault women, try to pick fights, and generally make drunken asses of themselves. Later on at night you get the joy of the finance «bros» who just shout and pop their collars while trying to stiff the bartenders out of the full price. All of you people know who you are, please kill yourselves, and quickly.
Porn-​Once I made the mistake of being here a little two late, the lights went down and freaky porn started to play on the screens behind the bar. That’s bad enough but this was some freaky fetish stuff too. I consider myself a fairly liberal person but this was a bit much, I left soon after.
Tap List — You wil die from boredom from this tap list. Sam Adams, Yuengling, Bud Light, Blue Moon. Yawny yawn yawn.
Atmosphere — again, there is some charm in a dive style bar, but this is too dirty and intruding.
Overall, I’d stay away or just come for happy hour and leave quick. Not worth your time.

Dakota roadhouse is the best of its kind — faux dive bar. Cash only, happy hour with flip a coin deal, decent beer selection/​prices, friendly bartenders, good unhealthy (probably unsanitary) bar food –try the empanadas, and finally AMAZING music for those of who grew up in the 90s.
Nowhere else will you hear as much chili peppers, weezer, sublime, and pearl jam.

This place is definitely a dive.
There have been several office happy hours at this establishment. It makes for a good and cheap outting.
Whats uncomfortable is sitting with superiors at Happy Hour while the montage of random clips ranging from wrestling, cartoons, old movies, to hardcore porn. Averting your eyes has never been so awkward. Each clip in the monage is about 2 minutes long. Do you know how awkward it is to be having a conversation with your male boss and a giant reel of women genitalia being rammed by male body parts plays for what seems like hours? I almost dont know where to look!
Aside from the weird videos, this place is okay if you’re into dives.