I came here on a bright sunny day in the summer, waiting to meet a group of guys for lunch and hundreds of drinks elsewhere. If I didn’t already have those plans I would have ordered up one their famous burgers and be done with it. But instead I sat there going back and forth in my brain about how I could justify a greasy bar burger (no doubt soaking the paper plate with fatty goodness) and still go for Mexican food and unlimited margaritas in like forty minutes. The old me–the one with the no decorum and a metabolism–would have instructed the octogenarian behind the bar to march his ass into that 4×4 space they call a kitchen and fry me up a cheeseburger with the 
works. The new, more adult me gently weighed my options, and proceeded to order three beers in the span of about 30 minutes. While I sat there with a mixture of Sam Adams Summer buzz and meat-induced regret, I took in the bar itself, a weird pastiche of the decades in which it has survived. You have your typical pressed tin ceilings and strange bathroom outcroppings that were necessitated sometime probably in the 70s when they decided women should be able to pee too. Then you have an odd bar back, which looks be of 50s vintage–a kind of sad 50s where dad drank Canadian Club in his basement “bar” and then went off to the bowling alley when he should have been paying attention to his wife. Perhaps sunlight wasn’t the best way to view the environs, but aside from some serious wear and tear, the place was classic all the way down the line, including the aforementioned no-nonsense bartender who didn’t seem to mind the solo asshole ordering beer after beer at eleven thirty in the morning. It turns out I should have probably gotten that burger instead of imbibing muchas cervesas prior to attending a tequila bomb of a brunch. For these were not the only beers I drank that morning, and I could have used some of the cow and bread to soak up the agave madness I endured several hours hence. [MF]
331 W 4th St. (bet. Jane St & 12th St.)
212/242-9502
cornerbistrony.com