Milk & Honey was a pioneering cocktail bar, opened by Sasha Petraske (1973–2015) in an unassuming space on Eldridge Street in the Lower East Side of New York City on New Year’s Eve in 1999. Out of consideration for his neighbors and landlord, who lived in the building and rented the space to him for $800 with the understanding he’d keep the bar quiet, Petraske decorated the front window like a tailor shop, and operated with a reservations-only policy that employed a constantly changing phone number to discourage a scene from developing within and a noisy line outside of the bar.
At a time when celebrity-studded boîtes such as Lot 61, Bowery Bar, and Asia de Cuba were garnering all the headlines in the New York City media, Petraske and his nattily dressed staff eschewed bottle service, fruit-flavored martinis, and DJs in favor of classic cocktails shaken and stirred to a jazz soundtrack. Anachronistic in both style and substance, Milk & Honey operated with posted rules prohibiting name- dropping, shouting, unwanted advances upon women, and a handful of other unchivalrous behaviors common in bars of the time. A business card with the phone number was given to patrons by staff members, who carefully vetted the clientele based on their willingness to abide by the bar’s ethos.
Each and every bartender split time behind the bar and on the floor as hosts and servers. Longtime employees who went on to open other bars with him include Joseph Schwartz, Richard Boccato, Christy Pope, Chad Solomon, Eric Alperin, Mike Madrusan, Lucinda Sterling, and T. J. Siegal.
In 2013, Petraske moved the venue uptown to 30 East Twenty-Third Street, turning the old space over to longtime bartenders Sam Ross and Michael McIlroy, who reopened it as Attaboy. The uptown location was more than twice the size and operated without the reservation policy and rules related to maintaining the peace in a residential neighborhood, making the new space feel more like a bar then a temple.
Milk & Honey will always be credited as the first of the modern speakeasies that sparked the modern cocktail renaissance, but Petraske never intended it to be labeled as such. See cocktail renaissance. He cited a hidden Japanese cocktail lounge near Astor Place in the East Village called Angels’ Share as his inspiration for Milk & Honey, which closed for good on Twenty-Third Street in 2014, when the sale of the building voided his lease. A second, equally influential location opened in London in 2002 under Petraske’s creative direction by Jonathan Downey of Match Bar Group; it fell victim to the Covid-19 pandemic and closed in 2020.
Milk & Honey’s legacy includes the creation of many modern cocktail classics, including the Red Hook, Silver Lining, Greenpoint, East Side, Penicillin, Paper Plane, and Gold Rush.
See DeGroff, Dale; Petraske, Sasha; and speakeasy (new).
Chaplin, Julia. “Buzz Off: Secret Bars That Spurn Hype.” New York Times, May 7, 2000. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/07/style/buzz-off-secret-bars-that-spurn-hype.html (accessed February 19, 2021).
Merwin, Hugh. “‘He Didn’t Follow Trends’: How Sasha Petraske Reinvented Cocktail Culture and Created a New Bartending Community.” Grub Street, August 24, 2015. http://www.grubstreet.com/2015/08/sasha-petraske-obit.html (accessed February 19, 2021).
“Sasha Petraske.” Difford’s Guide. http://www.diffordsguide.com/people/3080/bar-owner/sasha-petraske (accessed February 19, 2021).
By: Jim Meehan