The Third Man

I’m a super light weight drinker and rarely finish cocktails but I pretty much downed their Nice Pear, it was that delicious. I prefer vodka cocktails over rum, gin and tequila cocktails but I don’t come across them very often so I was excited to try the Nice Pear which was vodka, pear, lemon and rosemary syrup. Everything mixed well and I could barely taste the alcohol but it def kicked in after a couple sips. The hubs also had a couple drinks (strauss music and nero) which he raved about. We had the munchies halfway into our drinks so we ordered the ribs and fries — ribs were soft and tender, fries were regular fries but the aioli bacon dip was what made it stand out. I believe they’re connected with Eli & the Wolf on the same street so the food is legit. Music on a Saturday night was also on point — 80s/​90s hip hop. We came at 7:30PM and it wasn’t crowded at all — the bar seating was just about all taken but the tables were all available. We were there til about 10PM and it got adequately full but not super packed and you could still hear yourself talk without shouting. Cool spot to hang out, can’t wait to come back and try another cocktail.

A great, chill bar that’s home to creative concoctions and a pretty, earthy décor. It’s a small space, so it can get a little crowded; however, there’s plenty of cozy nooks to hang out in, plus it’s a lot calmer than your clubby alternatives in the East Village or Lower East Side. As an added bonus, the cocktail menu features unlikely ingredients like celery juice, which is a nice break from all those vodka sodas you’ve been drinking.

This place has absolutely incredible cocktails. Rarely do you find a bar that has such an eclectic, relaxed atmosphere but still can be bursting with energy. Between the wide variety of drinks and the tight playlist they’ve got playing, it’s quickly become one of my top bars. I’ve brought my friends here tons of times, they were very accommodating with a buddy’s birthday party. Great service and a pretty awesome food menu for some unique bar bites.
I’d recommend 3^rd man to anyone who really wants to enjoy their night but doesn’t want to pay a ridiculous cover or deal with over-​served, drunken idiots.

$ 118 attempted fraud charge, fortunately bank of america caught it while I was asleep. Classy establishment. Keep your hands over your pockets when visiting.

Great bartenders! Eric might be the best, though Max, Christian, Jess, and Kasia are all close 2nds. Though Christian does sometimes get a splattering of raspberry purée on his white shirts, giving the impression he may have been wounded slightly by a small gunshot.
Great cocktails that are constantly changin, a nice selection of small eats, and a beautiful bar. Arguably the only bar I constantly go to in the East Village. I will be back… Very often.

Always love chatting with the bartenders here, and if you’re a whiskey drinker you MUST try the Tennessee Waltz cocktail. Great service and lovely interior décor as well.

Max is a COOL dude. Best bartender in the East Village, great cocktails, food, & service.

I don’t write Unilocal reviews but when I do it is cause Max is the man. I have had like three Nice Pears and with every one Max does a different celebrity accent. He smells like Rosemary on Christmas morning. Going to Ave C is worth it!

This bar is nice but not memorable. Ambiance is nice (shouldn’t all bars have a relaxed ambiance though?) Drink was pretty strong but the bartender made it with not a lot in it. We were served smoked pepitas with our drinks which was a nice touch. They have a good happy hour. Good one to have in the back pocket for Alphabet City but I wouldn’t come out of my way to go here.

I came here to meet a group. We had called ahead to ask them to reserve a section for us to meet for happy hour and they were very nice to do so. It was a Tuesday, so it wasn’t busy at all, but still, the willingness to accommodate a group of 10+ was nice.
Normal prices for their wine selection is a tad high ($ 11-​$ 13), and during happy hour the wine still isn’t too cheap, but the beer can hold its own price and taste-​wise with the competition. No food though… they have a relationship with a local restaurant; the selection isn’t too large but tasty. Don’t wait until you are super hungry to order though.
I would come back here in the summer to hang out on the benches and sip a drink while taking in the LES crowd. Now, if only summer would rewind so I didn’t have to wait another 9 months.

Maybe I was just looking for a tasty cocktail, but I thought this place was cute and had nice little benches outside to watch «city life» pass by. My friend and I got the drinks ($ 13 each), but I expect those prices in NYC anyways, so I wasn’t totally shocked. Waitress was nice and drinks were yummy. Would definitely come back!

I went here with my girlfriend a few weeks ago on a Sunday afternoon and had an amazing time! The vibe of the bar is rustic and really cool. The bartender Max is really cool guy and made us some of the best cocktails I’ve ever had. I was a big fan of the Copacetic, Tennessee Waltz, and Velvet Revolver. I was a little skeptical to try the Velvet Revolver because the idea of egg white in a drink seems a bit odd to me. Believe it or not, the egg white is actually a great touch and makes the drink frothy and delicious. If you are looking for a fun/​relaxing cool bar with great drinks and great staff, I highly recommend The Third Man. Go try it out for yourself!

The Third Man sits deep into the Lower East Side, heck, pretty much right along the river. Its ample seating provides for a nice end to the evening; decent cocktails and drinks poured neat, both at your disposal.
As it pertains to setting itself apart from most other clean-​cut watering holes, the prohibition-​style feel and the multi-​sided bar-​top do not quite make it more unique. But, I appreciate the vibe and the tucked-​away location.
If there ever was a good mix between a dive (in the sense that The Third Man provides an intimate ambiance) and a speakeasy (as TTM does not do much advertising), this joint would fit into that sweet spot.

E and I came here after our awful dinner and drinks at Esperanto — I thought this place looked cute from the outside.
So we walked in and got the following:
Copacetic — this was okay, but I didn’t like the taste too much, I believe E got Velvet Revolver after the fact E’s first choice was a scotch and I can’t do scotch. So we got drinks that we both would be able to try and enjoy.
I liked E’s drink better, the tasted worked better with each other and E loved it better than mine too.
It wasn’t packed since it was Memorial Day weekend, so service was good and you could hear each other.

Good music. Cool ambiance. Dick bartenders — they all seem drunk and like they are more interested in hanging out with each other than doing their job. Takes forever to order a drink when the place has hardly any people (and there are three bartenders!). Lots of potential, but I’ll never come back because my party of 8 all felt unwelcome from the staff.

This place could be amazing. The cocktail menu is great and the drinks are really affordable. The space itself is really beautiful. But the wait to get drinks is extremely unreasonable. I think they need to figure out a better way to manage the crowd here because they were probably over capacity by 50 – 75 people. The line to get up to the front to get a drink was probably 20 minutes and then another 10 minutes to get noticed by the bartender and then another 10 minutes to close your tab. I’m not even exaggerating! Definitely don’t go here for a first date or bring anyone you need to have a conversation with because you’ll just be pushed around all night.
I’m sure this place is lovely on a weeknight but I’m going to stay far away on Friday and Saturday nights.

This place was great! It is a really nicely decorated cocktail bar in the East Village that is the perfect spot for a date. The décor has lots of nice little details, such as the felt on the bar stools, or the candles in the bathroom. One… interestingly shaped item is the light fixtures. I can’t imagine why someone would think those were a good idea, but they’re not obnoxious enough to detract from the overall aesthetic. The cocktails are good and interesting. I ordered a vodka pear drink, but got it instead with gin and it was quite good. I’m not sure if is was $ 13 good though. You be the judge.

Man, and to think I almost didn’t make it here.
Because you know, sometimes, let’s be honest, Avenue C might as well be Siberia for some people (me), especially after a big dinner, when it’s tempting to just pack it in, hail a cab, and jump into bed. But knowing we had friends going to The Third Man that evening, something drew us there and we walked off the calories to the far reaches of Alphabet City, thinking we’d do the right thing by being social and have a drink, maybe two, instead of the alternative, which was, of course, being fat-​ass, shut-​in losers.
Well, we made the right damn choice. And for many reasons — the main one being that The Third Man is a fantastic little cocktail hideaway of a bar I would’ve probably never trekked to discover on my own. I was hooked on their Tennessee Waltz drink, as I’m a sucker for most Maker’s Mark concoctions. This had a hint of vermouth and peach liquor that took the bite out of the bourbon, and was garnished with an orange peel for good measure. A Southern take on an Old Fashioned, if you will. The female bartenders here were exceptional, quick and professional and dedicated to their cocktail craft. So, I blew past that two drink limit I had set for myself, but I think we all saw that coming.
I spotted a few first dates here, but it appeared the earlier is better for that type of meet-​up, as the bar definitely gets packed as the night wears on, at least on the weekends. The Third Man is trendy, sure, but in a good way.
Now, delicious cocktails and potential romance are all fine and dandy, but I need to take a stab at setting the scene for you here, as the layout is unique and hard to describe. But that, of course, won’t stop me from trying. There are two booth pairings to either side of the front door — one fully outdoors like a patio, the other on the inside, but enjoyed with the windows up when the weather is warm enough. The glass façade creates a very open feel for such a small space. And the U-​shaped bar dead center dictates the crowd to snake around it. In short, it’s lovely, and would otherwise be tight quarters had the designers not made the most of this here square footage. That, and it should put the OCD-​minded drinking crowd at ease knowing how super symmetrical this place must look in blueprint form, like an overhead view of one of those dungeon rooms in Zelda or a perfectly put-​together Tetris set-​up. Otherwise, this place has probably nothing to do with video games.
You know what? I’m just gonna leave this right here:
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(And in the event the above diagram looks all jacked up on your browser, you’ll just have to trust me when I say it’s as straight as an arrow on mine.)
Anyway, if you’re anything like me, and love symmetry almost as much as you love cocktails, well, The Third Man offers a top-​notch dose of both.

This bar comes to us from the same owners of Austrian restaurant, Edi & The Wolf. With a serious focus on cocktails, this bar has a really sophisticated aesthetic and warm atmosphere with its exposed brick walls, and unique and interesting (and, sorry, but slightly questionably shaped) blown glass lighting fixtures.
For my beverage, I had the Harry Lime (mezcal, green chartreuse, maraschino, lime). I really enjoyed this drink. It was potent, slightly smoky, and had the perfect amount of sweetness.

Hello, lover.
So it was an absolutely freezing evening in NYC. I was all «hot toddies, please.» But I really wanted to try something new, and all my old favorites just get so crowded. What’s a girl gotta do to get a hot cocktail and a cozy armchair in this city? Make it herself at home?
Not an option.
But.
NY Mag had done an article on best winter bars, so like any self-​respecting New Yorker, I jotted notes about the best looking places into my iPhone. I had this little list and picked The Third Man because it was closest to my apartment and also boasted hot mulled cider.
I went with my bestie JAK. We literally couldn’t bundle ourselves enough to be warm on the way to the bar. But that’s okay because once we were inside, it was toasty-​city.
It was very rustic, wood, steel, more wood. A U-​shaped bar right in the middle and a few cozy booth-​like tables spotted around. There were two empty booths so we grabbed one. It was pretty awesome. It was all snuggly and raised off the floor, which always makes me feel just a little more tucked away. No waitress service, but that’s okay with me, my legs arn’t broken.
The menu had quite a few drinks I would like to try, but of course I went with one of my top two winter favorites, hot mulled cider with whiskey.
JAK got the same thing. It was really, really hot. We definitely couldn’t drink it right away. Which was fine, because even though the bar was super warm, my hands were still cold, so I wrapped them around my glass.
When I could finally try it, it was really good. No frills, classic and well flavored. It also had a really great whiskey to cider ratio, which is always a concern. Too much whiskey really ruins your hot cider. Not enough whiskey is a like child’s play. These bartenders got it right.
We sat for quite some time with our drinks. The noise level was low, great for conversation, but not so quiet you could hear the guy across the room from you sneeze. The patrons were friendly, everyone seemed to have the same purpose: warm up with booze. When we were getting ready to bundle up again and head back out into the cold, it was definitely far more crowded than when we first got there nearly 2 hours earlier (we arrived around 10PM on a Saturday).
I’m a bit fearful about adding another five star review to The Third Man, because I’ll bet you by next winter you can’t get in, much less get a table.
For now, I will enjoy the welcomed cozy wintery bar while it’s still relatively easy to get a table.
Cheers, Third Man. You won my hot cocktail loving heart.