Sixteen years ago, Julie Reiner’s arrival in Brooklyn officially marked Carroll Gardens as cocktail country. At the Flatiron Lounge and Pegu Club, Reiner became one of the leading figures of Manhattan’s early-aughts craft-drinking renaissance, and Clover Club brought the movement to Smith Street. Now, next door to that bar, in an old comic book store, are the bones of what looks like a Clover Club Mini-Me. Instead of the original’s imposing 1890s back bar, which was retrieved from Pennsylvania, there’s a smaller, younger piece of ornamental woodwork, this one rescued in Ohio.
When it opens in June, this will be the Saloon at Clover Club, an addition to its big-sibling bar that will be dedicated to a more casual cocktail experience, private events, and drink-making classes. “I feel like so much of the stuff I have done has not been planned,” Reiner says. “I’ve always been a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of person. Stuff kind of drops in my lap and I’m like, How can we not do this?” That goes for the Saloon. Her landlord called one day and said he’d like to rent out the building next door to her. So, of course, she took the deal. After a while, it became clear what to do with the new space. “Julie, said, ‘We should just put a bar in it,’” remembers Susan Fedroff, one of Reiner’s business partners and her wife. Are they happy to have another bar in their portfolio? “Ask us in late June,” says Fedroff. “Right now, we’re just all punching ourselves in the face a little.”
While the worlds of many New York bar owners have retrenched since COVID, Reiner’s, along with Fedroff and their other business partners Christine Williams and Tom Macy, has only grown. Along with Ivy Mix, Reiner runs Leyenda, the Latin-spirits focused bar across the street. And in fall of 2022, they reopened the Soho institution Milady’s. “We opened Milady’s,” Reiner remembers, “and Ivy said to me, ‘You’re still doing it!’” Of the bar-world’s old guard, Reiner is virtually the only one still actively opening and running bars. Why? “I like to work,” she says in the same matter-of-fact tone she uses to say almost everything. “I would be very bored otherwise.”
Colleagues use the word “honest” to describe Reiner, or maybe “brutally honest.” It’s an identity that helped turn her into an accidental television star, as well. In 2022, she became one of the judges on Drink Masters, Netflix’s mixological spin on the Top Chef formula, and she quickly fell into the role of the “tough judge.”
“There’s no BS with Julie,” says Tim Warren, one of the creators of the show. “She says it the way it is. She’s not putting on a character on television.”
Mix, however, thinks that’s too simple a description: “Julie, and successful women like her, can be perceived as harsh,” she explains. “But Julie is so kind and genuinely cares about the people in her life.”
“I think she’s making sure she doesn’t become a rarity,” says Izzy Tulloch, Milady’s head bartender and one of Reiner’s many proteges. “It’s always been a really tough career. After the pandemic, a lot of people who were in the industry found other ways of making money or even moved out of New York. It was tough for a little while. It felt like there wasn’t a lot of young talent that were thirsty, and the seasoned talent were tapped out.”
Mix, another Reiner-mentee-turned-mentor, explains, “It’s not easy to be a person getting older in this industry no matter what, but as a woman it’s particularly hard. Julie’s gotten better,” she says. “She’s made good decisions in this second half of her career by asking for what she deserved. She’s beating the odds — she’s aging into more success and fame.”
TV celebrity helps (“Leaving the bar on Friday after Drink Masters had aired, it took about an hour and half to get out of the door,” says Fedroff. “I was surprised at the number of people who were specially coming in because of the show”), but so does Reiner’s commitment to avoiding influencer bait and fleeting trends that can dominate drinks coverage: “I’ve been turning journalists down for decades who want to want to write, ‘What are the trends going to be for the next year,’” Reiner says. “I hate that article. Every fucking year. I’m just like, ‘I don’t know. Nobody knows. We’re just making it up so we can be in your article. ‘Rum is going to be the new sipping spirit.’ No, it’s not!”
Instead she’s wanted to build something more considered, and the Saloon will be an extension of that approach: The classic cocktails that she initially intended to be the core of the Clover Club menu, like the Tuxedo and Champagne Cobbler (as opposed to original creations), will finally find a home there, where patrons will order directly from the bar. There will be no table service — though there will be actual saloon doors.
In sticking to her guns, is there a danger of being seen as the last of a dying breed, the long-hauler craft cocktailian in a short-memoried industry that’s lately been more focused on experimentation and novelty? Reiner herself is trying to make sure that doesn’t happen. “Even more than mentoring, she’s teaching me how to mentor,” says Tulloch. “I think to teach people how to teach other people is harder.”
Reiner doesn’t mind the work. “We’ve been working our asses off for 25 years in this town,” she says. “I’m a firm believer that spaces have a soul—I want Clover Club to be the adult in the room.”
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Robert Simonson , 2024-05-29 14:00:11
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