Dead Rabbit alumni head up Limo in NYC
Ian Alexander and Mario Firmani will be beverage partners at the soon-to-open Limo Bar in New York City’s East Village.
Both Alexander and Firmani were previously bar directors at The Dead Rabbit.
The bar opens this week (11 June) and is co-founded by Reed Adelson, owner of Virginia’s bar and restaurant in New York City, and Jack Berry, of the city’s Ray’s bar and Original Henry Lambert’s Beer.
“After 10 years of owning and operating Virginia’s in the East Village, and three years on East 3rd Street, I knew I wanted to invest more in this neighbourhood,” said Adelson. “Not as an extension of Virginia’s, but as a straightforward, comfortable, cocktail-focused space that I felt the neighbourhood needed.”
Limo Bar aims to feel ‘celebratory, familiar, and unmistakably New York’.
Its drinks programme combines original recipes with nods to iconic cocktails, drawing inspiration from lobby bars, cocktail institutions and New York neighbourhood taverns.
Martinis serve as a centrepiece, with the menu section spanning classic expressions as well as more ‘playful’ signatures such as the Pickle Martini and the Pornstar Martini.
A particular highlight is expected to be the Clean Dirty Martini, which was originally developed in Paris by Colin Field. The cocktail features a single Castelvetrano olive inside a frozen orb of olive juice, which melts and transforms the Martini’s flavour profile as it’s drunk.
The rest of the menu focuses on classic cocktails, including Negronis, Cosmopolitans, Bloody Marys and more.
Food and design
Alex Baker, formerly of New York restaurants Rebelle and Yves, has created the food offering, which draws from grand hotel and bar dining. Options include prawn cocktail, mozzarella sticks, club sandwiches, steak frites, and classic desserts.
Julie Roberts collaborated with Berry on the interiors, which are intended to echo a 1980s stretch limousine through wraparound banquettes, warm wood panelling, mirrors and privacy curtains.
The bar is filled with scans of vintage private car service brochures, automobile auction catalogues, paparazzi photographs of iconic limousine moments, and personal photos of friends and family in limos.
“New York has this addictive ability to make you feel like you’ve made it, even when you’re still on the way,” added Berry. “When you’re sitting at Limo Bar, it feels like you’ve made it, and that’s what’s so New York about it.
“We weren’t interested in building a place that ends up on a list. We wanted to build a room with a personality of its own that New Yorkers come back to, with outstanding classic cocktails, inarguably good food, and the kind of atmosphere that gives you that same ‘oh yeah… this is why I live here’ feeling you get when you cross the bridge to Manhattan coming home from the airport.”
Related news
The world’s hottest bar openings from winter
