Dorrian’s Red Hand

Dorians is not a place that I frequent often, but twice a year, I end up there: once on my sister’s birthday, and once on mine. We go only to dance – they usually have a good mix of songs and it’s not TOO crowded, but other then that, it’s nothing special.
Last night, post-​birthday drinks, cake, and a few rounds of Justin’s «Sorry» music video, about 8 of my friends and I made our bi-​annual walk over to test out our new moves. I headed in, hung my coat, and met my sister at the bar. A few minutes later, my friend comes up and says that the bouncer – let’s call him Tiny – won’t let my friend in. The group’s ages ranged from 24 to 28 — certainly past the age when you hand over your ID and nervously hope they let you in. Though claiming to be a «highly trained expert» in, I guess looking at IDs, Tiny was convinced that my friend, who had come up from Washington D.C. for my birthday and has a Maryland ID, was trying to pull one over on him. OH no!!! Tiny was not going to be fooled tonight!
It was our own small version of «Making a Muderer.» My friend was Steven Avery, falsely accused of a crime. My other friends and I her defense, producing credit cards, school and work IDs, even her insurance card, trying to prove her innocence. In this scenario, Tiny was Ken Kratz, the overweight defender of the bar on an extreme power-​trip. Who knows how many other Maryland bar-​goers he has made cry outside Dorians from pure and utter frustration? I do fully realize that bouncers have to keep the under aged out, which I am extremely thankful for, and I can sympathize with him having to deal with drunk people for a living. Maybe he was sick the day his training program went over Maryland IDs, or maybe he was just having an off day, but last night, Tiny was wrong.
Since this is not a big deal in the hand scheme of life, or even our evening – not winning the Powerball took first place – we went to good ol’ bouncer-​less Phil Hughes on 1^st Ave and had a great night.

Good for decent priced drinks and if you want to watch the nonsense. The crowd at this place is overly preppy with the frat boys who think they are the masters of the universe and girls who more often than not are completely self involved. It is really bizarre that they all get drawn to this location, because if you go to any other bar in the neighborhood you will at least find some quality people. In order to go here I need to have had one too many drinks. Even then if I see a line with a bouncer at the door I’m not going to stand in a line for this place. On a side note I have never had an issue with the bouncers and usually get waived in right away. The staff is fine its mainly the clientele that leaves something to be desired. I haven’t had the food, so can’t comment on that.

This place is so casual, it kind of blew me away. The bouncers were letting everyone in. The mix of characters may have been a product of SantaCon and regular clientele, but I hope not because that would mean their regular clientele are really rude guys in ill fitting suits. The selection of beer isn’t that extensive, but good enough. The table service is a good as the bar service is bad, so I suggest coming with friends to grab a table. Lastly, personal pet peeve for a bar: don’t have a cramped restroom for ladies with a tiny mirror. You want us to be able to be cute. That’s all.

Ripped off tonight at Dorian’s (6:30 pm on a rainy Tuesday… the place was empty). My watered down gin & tonic cost me $ 9.00. Our server told us happy hour ended at 4. When we left, all 4 of us saw a sign right on the stand by the front door that read Happy Hour 3 — 7, Monday to Friday.

Oh how I love Dorrians…
If you are a preppy kid who went to a good school and now live in NYC, you will probably come to Dorrians and probably run into people you know. It’s almost a given. Come 1AM, there will be line out the door and around the corner. Zog sports teams frequent the bar during the day, but there is a dress code for the night crowd (button downs, etc.)
The staff are extremely friendly and many have been working there for 10+ years.
Food is shockingly delicious too. I’ve had:
— mozzarella sticks: crispy & delicious
— sliders: juicy & topped with bacon
— mushroom flatbread: mushrooms piled high and balsamic and mayo drizzle. Messy, but delicious!
There is a private room available to rent out in the back and a coat rack near the back of the main room. (Yes, as others have mentioned, if you hang up your Barbour or Burberry jacket, don’t be surprised to see its not there when you come back in 4 hours. Be smart people)
Dorrians is the perfect spot for sports games, a quick bite, and a night out!

Dorrians is the best place on the upper east side to meet vapid and entitled, pastel polo shirt wearing future yacht club members. As tempting as that sounds, do you want to have someone spill a cranberry vodka on your brand new camel colored Sperry’s that your dad hasnt even gotten the bill for yet?
Do you really want to spend your night holding a strangers hair over the toilet while her sorority sisters make sexual and drug fueled mistakes in the next stall? Maybe you do, I DONT KNOW YOUR LIFE!
Fine. You’ve made your bed and now you can lay in it: most of the people in this bar drink heineken. Thats right, HEINEKEN! (gasps of disdain). Many of the men here have «allergies» and have to carry kleenex with them at all times while blowing their noses at the bar while asking if you went to Vassar and what equestrian club you belonged to in connecticut. THE HORROR.
There is also a rogue bar cat (actual cat) that carries with her the PTSD of horrifically bad decisions of past patrons and the souls of previous bar frequenters. She twitches and mutters to herself while trying to forget what she has seen on the front lines of this boozy war. If she had 9 lives, she’s spending her last one silently judging you with her cat eyes and her hateful soul.
Can you live with her judging you? CAN YOU???

Just grabbed a Caesar salad and chicken fingers here. Good vibe, good bar for Sunday’s to drink (not bad cost-​wise)… Very good/​fun if you are a redskins fan. Nice divey bar on the upper east side.

It is Dorrian’s People!
You don’t come for the food, though the burgers and fries are surprisingly good.
Yes, there will be a line on weekend nights.
You come because you’re almost gauranteed to run into someone you know here. If you just read that and said, «No I won’t», then you should definitely go drink in a better bar. I like the Penrose.
If a house party is breaking up, or after an event, it is a good/​the default spot.
Dorrian’s is a fun spot, I like that they have coat racks in the winter, though if you hang up a Barbour good luck finding yours among all the others at the end of the night.
For those who have seen «Metropolitan» one too many times, for those who can’t think of a better place to go, for those who have some sort of reunion happening, come on down.

Bacon bourbon jam burger was do delic! It was huge, cooked perfectly and soooo yum. Don’t hesitate to stop in

Burgers are a good flavor (jalapeño one was good) but not cooked to order. My boyfriend and I have been twice and they did cook our burgers right. Fries are nothing to write home about.
The atmosphere sucks it’s either dead with nothing interesting to look at or packed with a bunch of young tools.
I’ve also been with friends to go dancing and it’s no bueno. Tools, tools and more tools. Music selection was ok but I’m getting too old for this place/​crowd.

Ask yourself:
Is it Thursday/​Friday/​Saturday night?
Is it past 11pm?
Do you find yourself on the Upper (upper) East Side?
Do you and your crew not feel like going downtown?
Are you single and looking to mingle? Or…
Do you just like to party?
Do you like to dance and sing along to 60s/​70s/​80s classics (plus modern top 40)?
If you answered yes to all or most of these questions then it is worth your while to check out Dorrians.
BUT: Having been a neighbor of and semi-​regular at the bar for 3 years now, I’ve found that the place can be very hot or cold. At its best, Dorrians is packed with a good looking crowd all dancing and singing along to an eclectic mix of throwback and modern tunes (think: entire bar dancing to «Shout»). Then, on other Friday and Saturday nights, the place is inexplicably dead. It’s a roll of the dice. I’d give it 4 stars if it were more consistent. But if you’re looking for a fun, late night bar on the UES, you won’t find anything else in the neighborhood.

The food was ok but they should not trick customers with drink. I ordered coke. And they gave me more ice than coke.

My daughter likes to frequent this UES neighborhood pub with her friends. We checked it out together during a weekend father-​daughter visit. It’s a cool and friendly place. The best kept secret is Chef John and his creative dishes. Give the Reuben Egg Roll a shot, you won’t be disappointed. This guy’s the real deal. Good selection of drafts, too.

We went for Lunch but were denied to see the Lunch Menu. So we Ordered Brunch. My Husband order the Portabella Sandwich and it wasn’t severe on the bread which was on the Menu. It was over cooked.
I ordered the Dorrian Burger, which was Way over peppered, served on a Stale English muffin instead of the Brochette bread, the fries were Greasy and Over Salted.
I wanted a Drink but all they were serving was Mimosa and Bloody Marys. Totally turned down at this Place. Seriously it was a 4 star and now its more like a 2 star!

Came in here last week expecting it to be mediocre bc of the reviews. I sat at a table mid-​late afternoon, had really good service, our waitress was very accommodating. But the pizza we ordered was probably one of the best I’ve had since living in NYC. The best part is that it only comes in a regular pie size. So I either eat all of it or get to take it home with me. Definitely going back!

This is a zogsports bar so we’ve come here twice after some touch football games. It’s an okay spot with a back room where they can set up one table for drinking games (beer pong/​flip cup) and music. Plenty of TVs in the dining area to watch games.
What we got:
Tater Tots — These are deliciously crispy
Buffalo Wings — Pretty good
Honey Srirarcha Wings — Interesting in a good way
Buffalo Chicken Wrap — DELICIOUS
Burger — Very good burger
Chili — Just okay and pretty small serving size
Chicken Pot Pie Pockets — These are terrible
Poutine — Not good and instead of cheese curds, they use melted cheese
Service:
Decent service albeit a little slow when all the zog teams come around after their games. Completely understandable though. The manager/​servers handled the crowd well and even offered free shots to zog teams!

Came here late on a Saturday night with friends, probably around 130−2AM (only in New York…) and had a great time! Obviously not the classiest of establishments, but very fun for a bar in the middle of Upper East Side. I like how the back room, even though small, has different music than the front… it’s always fun to vary it up!
Great place for dancing and drinking the night away with a group of friends, esp if you don’t want to venture downtown. Can’t comment on the food, though!

I ended up at Dorians with friends after an awful experience at nearby Brandy’s piano bar.
We were seated promptly. The service was quick and efficient.
The food was great. I had the Mac n cheese and many of my friends ordered chicken fingers. Everything was tasty.
To our surprise there was a back room with an additional bar as well as a dance floor.
We all had a blast dancing.
I’m happy I know about this place and an to return.

Fun. Really fun.
The UES, like the UWS, is not a monolith. Each 10 block area is its own entity.
A friend in real life lived in the city many years and met someone who has worked here a long time. I went after dance class at Ailey and Tuesday is karaōke. I half-​entertained the notion of singing because the DJ is cool and has music I might consider singing (I’ve never sung karaōke but in drunk moments have fantasized about show-​tunes or Joni Mitchell).
I live in a more geriatric part of the UES (60s). Up in the 80s it’s a lot different. In the early 1990s when I lived on weekends from college in CT with a colleague of my father’s in the Leighton House on 88^th between 1^st and 2^nd (a gorgeous highrise where this corporate lawyer had a duplex from which we watched the NYC marathon one year), the area was not that developed.
Dorian’s is in the area formerly known as Germantown. Now it’s Yorkville, the way that the Lower East Side is now Nolita by the Sunshine (Landmark) Cinema off the 2^nd subway stop for the F train. And you can find, if you work at it, a really cute one-​bedroom (not a studio with a closet for a bed) for 2100 or so on York. That’s kind of Siberia in the winter as it’s a hike to the 86^th subway but you can have a real place and if you save that much on rent, you can take more cabs. If I didn’t have a place in the city and moved here, I’d do the upper 80s on York thing and just cab more.
The Starbucks close by is nice and I met a nice woman with a law degree who worked at NYU in administration. She told me that with the NYU parents buying around NYU as investments and flipping properties, even graduate educated employees at NYU can’t even think about buying in the Village. So it’s a much more fertile and social place than it was back when HMV was still in business. Of course anyone under 40 hardly remembers record stores with cassettes.
Around 9, it’s more a late 30s crowd. It gets younger as the night progresses. I had no idea this was the «preppy murder» bar as I had no connection to the city in those years. But when I checked in on Unilocal,a doctor friend in his late 60s in DC who grew up in the city and worked here for some time, commented on my check-​in posted to FB.
The menu looked fine and I contemplated a French onion soup for 6 but didn’t end up eating. It’s a friendly crowd and heavy on smokers (outside by the messy 2^nd Ave subway construction which has put a lot of businesses out of business, sadly). I still smoke but much less now that I started V2 (e-​cig) but it is just so NICE to be in a place where people do not look askance (at best) and viciously (at worst) at someone smoking on a potty/​smoke break on the street. In WLA (the nicer part of LA), if you light up, people assume you slaughter rescue kittens in your spare time. SB is no different.
Dorian’s is close to Brandy’s, the largely but not entirely gay piano bar, which I like though I prefer Marie’s Crisis in the Village. Brandy’s is fun but it’s hit or miss as far as the guy/​gal playing piano.
On a nice night, it’s pleasant to walk down to the lower end of the UES or Midtown East.
A very fun night. But I would never sing as the people are mostly quite good. It struck me as solvent young professionals (40 the upper limit) who elected to be comfortable in life rather than pursuing their musical passions. Solvent is good. But if I’m going to break my karaōke cherry, it will not be in Manhattan where there are servers, bartenders, hostesses with more talent than many people who make it on TV in an era that prizes looks over talent.

Aside from my couch this is my favorite place to watch a Redskins game when I can’t be there live. Good food. GREAT atmosphere and a quick bar staff. We had wings and chicken tenders. The wings were better than the tenders, but I wish I had read about the mozzeralla sticks first. They sound amazing.
HTTR!