The most Irish thing on offer is “Grilled Cheddar Irish Skellig,” which, after some careful googling, turned out to be a grilled cheese made with cheddar from the Irish island of Skellig. There is something called “Broccomole,” which I can only imagine is guacamole made with broccoli, and something else called “Airline Chicken Breast,” and both of things sound quite frankly too self-punishing for Wilde to ever have gotten on board with. There are a couple of clearly UK-inspired dishes like “Banger in a Blanket” (wrapped in puff pastry, American-style, instead of in bacon like the Brits do) and “Cottage Pie,” but even the “Wilde Burger” is simply a burger topped with, of all things, American cheese. You might expect Irish cuisine, but that’s largely not what you’ll find, unless there is a Gaelic origin I’m unaware of behind calamari, sesame kale Caesar salad, or schnitzel. It’s with the food that the menu really runs into trouble. True, they only gave us one drink menu because they had somehow run out (on a Wednesday night with a half-empty space), but I enjoyed my Bee’s Knees (gin, honey, and lemon) anyway. It still suffers from the bar’s lack of clarity-there’s a Victorian section, a Prohibition section, a “Wise Guys” section (including a drink called “My Bookie’s Wife’s Cocktail”), and a Seasonal section-but at least all four look and taste good. The cocktail menu is Oscar Wilde’s high point. (Also, their website boasts: “Mens room based on Leslie Castle in Ireland where Paul McCartney got married,” so…there’s that. The whole thing had a general aura of “Is it kinda old? Chuck it on the mantelpiece! Any mantelpiece!” And the building’s historical antecedents don’t explain why the sound system alternated between The Best of Glen Miller and classic rock, or why the ladies’ room had an old time-y wireless in it playing what appeared to be a WWII-era broadcast. But the Victorian era and the Jazz Age are wildly different in terms of decor, music, social mores, and even food and drink, so they make pretty strange bedfellows as shared inspiration. By signing up you agree to our terms of useĮxcept once we dug into the historical references a bit, they didn’t seem to be strictly Victorian? To be precise, the bar is Victorian- and Prohibition-themed, since the building spent a little over a decade as the Prohibition Enforcement Headquarters. Thank you for signing up! Keep an eye on your inbox. The whole effect was striking enough that we resolved to go back for dinner. The ornate windows are painted with gilt lettering and crammed with Victorian knickknacks, and the glimpse of the bar inside-at 118.5 feet, the longest in New York-is impressive. Yes, you read that last sentence right.Ī friend and I first passed Oscar Wilde a few weeks ago-in a couple of senses, because not only is that the name of the restaurant, it’s got a bench out front with a statue of its namesake looking dapper and slightly uncomfortable. Naturally, I couldn’t leave the new Oscar Wilde-themed novelty gastropub in Manhattan to such a fate. Oscar Wilde once wrote: “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” She knows an unnecessary amount of things about Donald Duck. She blogs about superhero TV, tween pop culture, and Disney at Jess's (Somewhat) Grown-Up Type Blog. When not at her academic publishing day job, or trying to make every movie into a musical through sheer force of will, she bakes, cleans her apartment obsessively, and writes feverishly into the night. Jessica Plummer has lived her whole life in New York City and yet somehow still hasn't been asked to join the Avengers.
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