King Tai
King Tai and I are both celebrating our 8th year anniversaries this week: mine of living in New York and theirs of being open for business at 1095 Bergen St, Brooklyn, NY 11216.
When I first started frequenting King Tai I was bartending 6 nights a week split between Metrograph and the old Beverly’s location on Essex. My only night off a week I would escape to Bed Stuy and spend the night on a friend’s blow up mattress as a sort of mini vacation from Manhattan. I think it was Tuesdays. My friend Cameron lived down the street from King Tai on the Crown Heights side of Atlantic. The bar resides in a small square building that had a few tables for outside seating even before the pandemic. The name is a holdover from the business previously at the address: a laundromat. Cam and I generally took two stools at the bar and would act out a little piece of public theater you may have seen before called “yeah I could have a beer or two but I’m not really trying to drink.” Back then the menu was written on the wall high behind the bar and listed cocktails numbered 1 to 7 or 1 to 5 or something about 6 plus or minus 1. Currently they have a printed menu or QR scannable menu of cocktails with names, but they still change with the seasons. There was usually a tequila/mezcal drink, something with whiskey, a gin or vodka and then a couple of rum concoctions as this place favors itself a bit of a rum bar. Cam and I would peruse said list and choose whichever was our fancy then chat the bartender up with some sort of mixological gossip and say annoying things like “oh you guys have Dimmi you don’t see that very often.” Cam even worked there at one point but only ever at random. Though he wouldn’t admit it I believe it was for subtractive financial purposes rather than to garner a wage. I’ve never had a bad drink here, regardless of what I’ve chosen, and I presume the numbers were just for ease of transaction and not a coursing requirement as 6 average would be a lot of drinks for one sitting.
Routinely we would try all 6. In order often but not as a rule. We’d drink one tequila, one tequila/mezcal, one gin, one rum, one vodka, and one more rum. This would have been a more than appropriate place to call it for the evening, but instead we’d continue on to two Pacificos and two shots of tequila. Right about now Cameron is drunk enough to suggest, and I am drunk enough to oblige, that we have a pair of Death in the Afternoon’s.
“You aren’t gonna have one with me? You fancy yourself a writer and you’re gonna make me drink alone?”
“I’m not gonna ‘make’ you do anything.”
“Hemingway would be rolling in his grave.”
“Let him!”
“This is just like in St. Croix when you made me drink three all by myself.”
“That’s on you. I was driving. And then that big rasta guy threw his beer at you.”
“Oh right. In front of that bodega.”
“Yeah we were drunk and couldn't figure out why.”
“I should have bought that Coogi shirt.”
In the compilation cocktail book titled “So Red The Nose,” edited by Sterling North and Carl Kroch, in 1935, with illustration courtesy of Esquire magazine, Hemingway describes the Death in the Afternoon as absinthe in a champagne flute topped with iced Champagne and he recommends you drink 3 to 5 of them; slowly. I do not recommend you do this as you will surely black out but if you must then be sure to remain close to home or bed and maybe have a more sober person to escort you there but not your 5 foot tall 100 pound, if dressed for cold weather and wearing snow boots, ex-girlfriend as was the case on my last walk down that road. We drink one a piece and now I have to get a cab back to the city because I am no longer fit for public transportation, but first we go next door to the corner chicken spot named simply Chris. I’ve never known whether the food there tastes good or not. I’ve only been there drunkenly past 2, so I can’t speak on the matter other than to say under those circumstances it’s delicious.
The bar is a little L shape at the left of the room when you walk in. There are stools stuck into the floor around it and a few more at counters by the windows on either side of the entrance. A few tables and chairs to the right and in the right back corner before the bathroom is a big circular booth lovingly referred to by some as “the hot tub.” The color scheme is pink and a soft turquoise and cream eliciting the feeling of a southern estate or Caribbean community house or possibly even a country club. Often at a back rail, between the bar and bathroom, a DJ will set up with a host of vinyls and treat the room to a bit of sonic curation. Imagine one stacking the record sleeve on the wall behind him in a gestural way as if to say he’s doing something more than just his job. If you are curious about moving to the neighborhood of Crown Heights I would recommend you stop in on a Thursday after work or a Sunday afternoon and take notice of the clientele as to me it has always felt like a central casting session for a Brooklyn sitcom a la High Fidelity or High Maintenance. Otherwise, it does get quite crowded and it’s really the kind of bar you want to sit down on chair at.
To state it plainly, and with no need to hem nor haw nor debate nor consider, it rests solidly in my personal Top 10 best bars in New York City list, and since the pandemic it’s sort of only gotten better. Before they had a few chairs outside yes but they were generally taken early by local super regulars. Now there are over twice as many. Before you may have been able to get a veggie or chicken empanada heated up in a toaster oven for you. Now they have tacos and banh mi and elote. The cocktails may have become less numerical and less written on a wall in chalk but no less tasty. Another notable feature, and perhaps less discussed but no less important, is the restroom. Unfortunately there is only one but as those in the know know it is one of the Top 3 best mirror selfie opportunities in the tri-state area. I am not sure if it’s the gentle lighting, the soft jade green back wall, or perhaps the mirror itself is some finely crafted artifact the secrets of which are lost to time. Regardless, I dare you to go document yourself there and not be impressed.