Checking around my usual city guides, I came across a listing for the Bowery on CitySearch. The name itself was intriguing, evoking a New York neighborhood out of the early 1900s. You’d go there and hang your Bowler hat on the hat rack and sit and have a whiskey, or whatever they drank back then. No other online guide mentioned the bar, but the bit I read about it was intriguing. A New York-style neighborhood bar located on Sunset Blvd. What’s the appeal of other cities’ feel in our town? Novelty perhaps? Or is it for transplants who miss home? In any case, a “New York style” bar is appealing just in the sense that it seems to promise a big city feel comfortable in its own skin, as opposed to a bar where people go to see and be seen and feel insecure all the while. Do they do that in New York, too? If they do, no one told me.

In any case “bowery” in the dictionary means a city district in New York known for cheap bars and derelicts but since this one is located on Sunset next to the much hyped, new restaurant, Magnolia, I highly doubt it’s a cheap bar.

Apparently, this one offers American and French comfort food. The kitchen closes at midnight but they still offer a cheese and charcuterie plate for midnight snackers. The wine list is small but well chosen and the signature drink is a “white cosmo-style martini.” But I really want to see what this place is about. L.A. could always stand another New York bar.

From CitySearch:

Under a pounded tin ceiling, wall-mounted loveseats and floor-to-ceiling black-tiled walls, hungry hipsters graze on an American and French comfort food. The menu includes a ground sirloin burger and Belgian ale-braised short ribs. Boozier spirits find a theme bar of ebony woods and actual NYC-imported barstools, which feel more comfortable after a high-end pilsner or Paso Robles zin.

6268 Sunset Blvd
Hollywood, CA 90028
(323) 465-3400
Cross Street: Vine Street