Bar Type: Dive Bar
Cuisine: Bar Food
This joint has been on my must visit list for years. It has all the hallmarks of what I appreciate in a bar. Mainly that people qualify it as a dive. A moniker that I generally find to be overblown. Like people categorizing way too many bands as punk just because they have a little screaming and some anti-social tendencies. What really makes a dive anyway? Should you be scared to go to a dive as an upstanding member of society? Should you maybe tape your cash (they are cash-only) to your body like some Wolf of Wall Street money launderer? Do you need to break out that butterfly knife that your parents foolishly bought you for your twelfth birthday because every kid in the 80s was constantly being plied with a steady stream of sugar cereal, inappropriate R-rated movies and “toys” that could cause them to either lose an eye or a finger? Point is, are we supposed to construe that something called a dive should be dangerous, or in some way prohibitively not some place people with diplomas go? Well, I’ll tell you, if that’s the case, The H.A.T. is the nicest dive I’ve ever been party to.
Now, when I say “nice,” I’m not necessarily talking about the physical bar. It feels like Tierney’s if it had been left out in the rain for a few years. And was mostly made of cardboard and cat fur. The day we came was hot hot. Like not a day you’d ever think of going out in their chainlink beer garden. So we came in out of the late afternoon sun into a space so dim and low-ceilinged that, at first, we were unclear if they were even open. Granted, it was early happy hour on a Friday, so only a couple true-blue regulars were just pulling up their stools to the beat-up bar. Once our eyes adjusted, we found ourselves in a single room that definitely felt like the cleared-out bottom floor of a house decorated like your uncle’s 1970s rumpus room, complete with pool table, dart board and jukebox. Which, I have to assume, is exactly what this place used to be. Though, unlike an actual house, you don’t enter through the front door, but kind of wend your way in the back through their small parking lot. You’d think this was somehow inhospitable, but I’d read that only dumb noobs try the front entrance, and that the real heads know the trick. So, I was on point. But, yeah, this place ain’t gonna win any beauty contests. Nor is it a place I’d think to eat seafood. But that’s for later.
Now, if we thought that the space itself was immediately offputting, our fears were instantly assuaged by the sweetest bartender in NJ. A low bar to be sure, but she was instantly welcoming and seemed authentically surprised and delighted by four middle-aged, generally well-groomed sober people who looked just as surprised to be here at 4:30 on Saturday from just across the line in Montclair as she was to see us. She happily told us that they don’t have any beers on tap — which is honestly a little bonkers — but that they have a nice, concise list of domestic, big brewery pilsners and lagers. And Corona. Oh, and they just got something new in: Modelo Especial! Literally, she acted as if Modelo wasn’t currently, in 2026, the best-selling beer in the US. But, hey, I’m a fan. So, Modelo me! And she did, removing one from a small, blue Igloo cooler behind the bar. Not a fridge. Not like one of those large, zinc trough things filled with ice built into the edifice. A little blue cooler like one you might bring to the beach. So quaint. Such a dive thing to do. And that shit was cold. And cheap. I think our four beers cost in the vicinity of $12 or maybe $16? I don’t know, but in the age of even cheap domestic brews running $8 a piece, even at shitty bars, this was a really rockin’ reprieve.
I was once a young man. A young man who eschewed the nicer, velvet rope clubs of the 1990s in NYC and, instead, loved to hit up the diviest dives I could find for a cold bottle of Bud and some rock ‘n’ roll. As the years progressed, I never lost my love of the wretched hives of scum and villainy or the rock ‘n’ roll, but I started wearing collared shirts, got a weird sense of aged humility and came to a pretty abrupt realization that Bud tastes like wallboard. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t take an afternoon to revisit my loves — swapping out the Bud for a more appropriate Mexican domestic in this case. Our neighbor friends, who we dragged along on this adventure a whole half mile from our houses, soon saw themselves in this place as well. As we seated ourselves in front of a TV draped in a large Eagles banner that happened to also be airing an Eagles pre-season game. The wife, a life-long Philly fan, couldn’t wipe the smile from her face. Was this a Philly bar? Or, more likely, had some regular brought the banner in himself, asked for it to be hung up and they obliged because what dive bar can turn down free ephemera? (Though, my two-seconds of research on their FB page tells me the Philly thing is real.)
All settled in and happy as clams, we were approached by the aforementioned bartender and regaled with a glowing review of their amazing burger, fries and a dozen steamers special. She promised, with real conviction, that they are amazing. The steamers. Which are apparently clams. Like us. I’m from Southern California (in case I didn’t already mention that like I do in every other post on this site) and I don’t know what a steamer is. We eat sushi. And chili fries. And Mexican. And El Pollo Loco (which, technically isn’t Mexican). But I don’t know a steamer clam from a… well, whatever those clams are that come in bouillabaisse. Which, of course, is French. Thing is, I believe her. Though, as I mentioned earlier, the thought of eating anything from the ocean in this joint gives me the hot spits. I was tempted, however. Though I think — nay, I know — that I’ll be back and will most definitely ease into my H.A.T. culinary adventure with one of their burgers. Because who the hell doesn’t love a burger? And maybe I’ll drag Hipster Jr. along, as their wings look like the real deal, and that boy loves him some wings. It’s always nice to be surprised. But, honestly, I knew I was gonna dig this place; it just took me 20 years too long to get here.
36 Harrison Ave. – West Orange
973/736-9686
