Business of the Month: 11th Street Bar, 510 East 11th Street
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Great bars come in two varieties: the specialized ones that please some of the people all of the time, and the general ones that please all of the people some of the time. Our March 2025 Business of the Month, 11th Street Bar (510 East 11th Street, between Avenues A and B) might just be our greatest example of the latter variety. A traditional Irish public house with an invigorating dash of New York rock ‘n’ roll, 11th Street Bar excels at being multiple things at once. It’s a relaxing happy hour spot, but also a perfect place for celebration. It’s a quiet place to catch up with an old college friend, but also a music lover’s mecca. It has the elegance of a destination where you might bring your parents, but also the coziness of a place where you might fall in love.
Credit for 11th Street Bar’s many virtues goes to its owners, former bartenders Dan Sweeney and Diarmuid and Meghan Joye, who take great pride in the operation of the establishment. They inherited, however, a strong foundation to build on when they acquired the venue in 2018. The groundwork was laid by the bar’s founder Brendan O’Reilly, an Irish immigrant who left a long-time bartending gig at the venerable Ear Inn, to launch his own place in 1997 at what was then luthier H.L. Wild’s woodshop.
The venue reflected from the outset Brendan’s appreciation for both the conviviality of traditional Irish pubs and the energy of their New York City counterparts. It did not take long for the venue to become a popular happy hour hang out for neighbors. When a couple of regulars from the block, musicians Jack Smead and Keith Christopher, proposed bringing live music to the venue, Brendan, in his wisdom, told them to go right ahead. Soon, the bar started attracting customers from further afield, especially musicians and bar tenders. Dan Sweeney was both.
Dan moved to the East Village in 1999 and worked as a financial analyst until the 9/11 attacks made him reconsider his career. He redirected his energies toward his bartending job at St. Mark’s Alehouse and toward his fairly successful band, Acquiesce — name for which he takes no responsibility. One day, in 2004, he wandered into the 11th Street bar and saw then-11th Street residents Jason Isbell talking to Justin Town Earle at one side of the bar and Ryan Adams and the Cardinals sitting at the other. Concluding that this was where musicians hung out, Dan became a regular there himself. In 2010, he became a bartender at 11th Street Bar; and then, in 2018, he acquired it, along with fellow St Mark’s Place bartending veterans Diarmuid (Bull McCabes) and Meghan (Ryan’s Irish Pub).
The bar could not have fallen into better hands. Dan proclaims without qualification his place to be the greatest neighborhood bar in the greatest neighborhood on Earth; and he has made it his mission to make 11th Street Bar live up to this lofty claim. To that end, Dan’s approach could not be more straightforward. He just ensures that everything the bar does, it does very well.
The Basics
The reasons for 11th Street Bar’s success begin with the basics of a well-conceived and well-run bar operation. For starters, its founder Brenden subscribed to the enlightened belief that a New York bar should be made out of wood, brick, and tin ceilings. The results speak for themselves. Walking in, you feel as if you’ve wandered into a cozy corner of old New York, except without the funk or the grime; as much as the bar looks “rock n’ roll,” its smell is more “easy listening.” It has received an A rating from the Health Department every year since they started issuing them.
Staff members at 11 Street Bar will strike you as unusually happy to be there. Maybe that’s because they receive work benefits. Everybody who works there for over six months gets offered a 401K plan. (And if they don’t want a 401K plan, they have to sit down with a former financial analyst, who happens to be their boss, and learn about compound interests). Everybody who is a full time bartender gets offered health insurance.
The bar prides itself on offering a welcoming environment for all types of gathering. As a result, music levels are kept at civilized levels and are never waged as an instrument of war. Beyond that—musician’s bar that this is—the music selection is invariably thoughtful and deliberate, and not an algorithmic afterthought.
The Music
Speaking of which, music constitutes one of the core elements of the venue. The bar offers live tip-based music five days a week, regularly featuring musicians who command a $40 cover charge when they play elsewhere. Thanks to recent efforts by Dan, the sound set up is now a far cry from the improvised self-adjusted PA arrangement of the early years. The backspace boasts a state-of-the-art sound system, including ceiling mics for acoustic sets and video cameras that transmit performances to the TV screens in the front room. A sound engineer on staff operates the mixing board, and a sound monitor helps bands stay within neighbor-friendly volumes. The separation between the front and back room allows gatherings, dates, and conversation to proceed undisturbed by the musical performances and vice versa.
The bar has hosted a traditional Irish seisiun every Sunday for 25 years. Led by fiddler Tony DeMarco, and often joined by top traditional musicians from around the world, this acoustic performance draws an audience from throughout the city. On Mondays, a traditional jazz quintet led by Richard Clements takes over, along with a rotating cast of exceptional musical guests. On Tuesdays through Thursdays, the bar features americana bands booked by Dan himself but often consisting of returning musicians who have held a regular gig here for years, and who collectively make up the bar’s extensive musical community.
Dan explains that, as a musician himself, he takes a special satisfaction in the bar’s music program:
I enjoy having the musicians here, even though I could make more money if we didn’t have live music on certain nights. But these guys, they count on us for the gig, and it keeps live music in New York going, after we’ve lost so many clubs. Jazz on Mondays, for example, is a passion project of mine. It’s never the greatest monetary night. But it’s very important that these guys have a place to play. And people sit around, and maybe we sell more soda water on Monday than we do the rest of the week, but it doesn’t bother me. Keeping this place the way it is, is very important to me. I’ve never done anything here to make the most money. I’ve always done it to have the coolest bar.
Beer and Food
The bar treats the headliner of its unassuming beer menu, Guinness Irish Stout, as an object of reverence. It consistently makes lists for the best pint of Guinness in the city and sells on average over twenty kegs of the dark elixir every week. Asked what makes his Guinness better than that found in your average establishment, Dan has a ready answer: Love. The full answer, however, is a bit more involved. The bar keeps the lines and glassware immaculate, the kegs at the ideal temperature, the cold room a very short distance below the bar, and separate CO2 and nitrogen tanks, so that the gases can be blended in the proportion prescribed by the brewery. We suppose that only love could explain a set up so meticulous.
For those feeling peckish or in need of something to wash down with a Guinness, the bar offers a selection of primarily Irish snacks sourced with the same care that goes into the serving of their stout. Their sandwiches are made with Brennan’s Irish bread. Their country ham comes from J. Baczynsky, their pretzels, from Sigmund’s, and their potato chips, from the Irish favorite Tayto (so make that potato “crisps” and “favourite”).
The Result
Dan’s overarching goal in his management of 11th Street Bar has been to offer a wonderful experience to a wide range of people. These efforts have, in their aggregate, kept this place a quintessential neighborhood bar that attracts people from well beyond the neighborhood for entirely different reasons. Some local old-timers have been coming to happy hour for decades. Irish music lovers pack the bar till the wee hours on Sundays; jazz lovers do so on Monday; and the Liverpool Supporters Club, which has had its headquarters here for over twenty years,* do so at 9:00am on Liverpool Reds match days. People gather here to celebrate birthdays, engagements, new jobs, retirements, and everything in between, or simply to hang out and perhaps even meet a kindred soul. Dan maintains that, if you like coming to this bar, you’ll likely hit it off with others who do. And he should know. This is where he met his wife.
For making a persuasive case for being the greatest neighborhood bar in the greatest neighborhood on Earth, we are thrilled to name 11th Street Bar our March 2025 Business of the Month.
*The connection between Liverpool and an Irish pub is not incidental. Liverpool, a port city, has historically had a sizable Irish population. The famous Liverpool English or “Scouse” is said to be a blend of the Irish and Welsh accent.
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Here is a map of all our Businesses of the Month: