Social Bar Grill & Lounge
Categories: Nightlife, Restaurants [Edit]
Neighborhoods: Manhattan/Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan/Theater District795 8th Avenue
(between 48th St & 49th St)
New York, NY 10019 (212) 459-0643
- Nearest Transit:
50th St-8th Ave (C, E)
50th St-Broadway (1)
49th St-7th Ave (N, R, W)
- Price Range: $$
- Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
- Parking: Street
- Attire: Casual
- Good for Groups: Yes
- Good for Kids: No
- Takes Reservations: Yes
- Waiter Service: Yes
- Wheelchair Accessible: No
- Music: DJ
- Best Nights: Mon, Tue
- Happy Hour: Yes
- Alcohol: Full Bar
22 Reviews for Social Bar Grill & Lounge
Open wine and beer bar is always a hit when the boss is paying (sorry to the shareholders). Cool 3-story bar with an rooftop out door patio. Pretty good service and pretty good finger snacks like chicken fingers, quesadillas, and pigs in the blanket. Seriously inhaled 10,000 calories in my one trip.
People thought this was:
Useful (2)
Cool (1)
The service is incredibly sporadic and slow. We were served the wrong order twice. All we wanted were turkey burgers, some appetizers, and fries on the side. Simple enough, I think.
The space is less crowded during after-work hours. Maybe a good place to meet up if you need Top 40 hits from three years ago to fill awkward pauses in conversation.
People thought this was:
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a cute three (four?) story bar that mixes stiff drinks. music is not club-loud, but still requires shouting and lots of head inclinations and quizzical looks.
third flood rooftop bar was nice, but in the summer, who wants to leave the refuge of the air conditioning to look at the stars? there's too much smog anyway.
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Pleasantly surprised by this sports pub - ended up here by accident, and was presented with a $7 sliders platter and $3.50 Bud special. As far as a bar goes, it's clean with a good selection of beers including Guinness on tap, and a full bar if liquor's what suits you. Roof top patio for when it's not pouring rain!
And the food - wow! was not expecting such quality. The BLT came on sourdough focaccia, and the sliders were juicy, flavorful, and overall yum-inducing. but, the real winner was the fries. as others have mentioned, they are awesome! crispy, with a light beer batter and the perfect amount of salt and pepper. absolute goodness.
great service, and they have several tv's on various sports games including American Gladiator, haha.
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Slow service. So-so food. And what the hell is up with the DJ? Knock a buck off each dish and can that guy. I'd much rather have a jukebox than have to scream over the sounds of old-school songs I wouldn't put on my iPod if you paid me. It's a bar, people, not a club, not a lounge. Adding a DJ doesn't make it hip.
No reason to ever return, but it gets two stars since it was actually better than the first place we tried.
Don't look for anything extraordinary here, the bouncer guy seemed nice, but the clientele is the typical Midtown banker/ex frat boy/creepy married guys/military bar.
It's just like all the other bars on 8th avenue, over crowded, over priced and over done.
And to the person below who said this place is kinda upscale, it's not, not at all. It has an upscale look about it maybe, but there's no dress code or anything , pretty casual and boring.
Fairly good tap selection.
Slightly bitchy female waitstaff.
Mediocre food (tried the buffalo wings, potato skins, and nachos).
4 HD TVs
Large space (lots of stairs and levels and sublevels to explore).
Somewhat handsome decor (dark but clean).
Not too crowded.
I think I covered all the stops. Oh, price? Not the cheapest but not bad...party of four came out to $75.
I'd say, it's worth checking out.
People thought this was:
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kinda upscale, olderish people. kinda last minute decision to come here
had the buffalo chix wrap which was really good. decent beer selection, had a good time. dont know if i'd go back. maybe in like 5 or 10 years when i'm older and wear a suit to work and want to be creepy and hit on younger girls.
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This place is quite near to where I work, and as a result, coworkers often choose it as an after-work watering hole. I've been on every floor, but my favorite is, of course, the top floor, which leads out to a small rooftop patio, poorly decorated with a sparse amount of white Christmas lights. It's a really nice treat in the summertime, and even on pleasant fall evenings.
I LOVE THIS PLACE! I decided to throw a huge party (something I'm known to do) and after searching, decided upon Social. I guess since I called well in advance, I was able to reserve a full bar for my party of 20 with a reasonable 2 hour open bar. Let me tell you, nobody left sober that night!
The only disappointing thing was that it took the staff a little bit of time to figure out who was bartending. Other then that, it was a flawless night. If you are looking to have an open bar with a ton of your close friends, this is the place to have it at! Honestly, at first I was not too impressed but after seeing how much fun my friends were having - I was able to relax.
Definitely would have another party there again in the future! Staff was very accommodating!
People thought this was:
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Went here tonight for the first time- like Bill below said, the fries were amazing lol. Decent setup- cute bartender on Level 2.
People thought this was:
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went on a Thursday, and wasn't too bad. it is definitely for an older crowd like 30's-40's, but still had a decent time
Go for the french fries.
Stay for more french fries.
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Sports Fans:
They don't have the game audio, and can't seem to figure out how to change to HD channels. That being said, they had a good selection of beers, and the atmosphere was rocking. It looked like a chill place to party, but it was disappointing for Sunday football.
Update 6/1/2008-
I went back again on my last trip to NYC, and they had all of the bars open. Same complaints as last time, and the crowd was full of complete D-bags.
The three level story building located in the heart of theater district is a great place to unwind on the weekend. Occasionally it gets a bit crowded, thus the multiple floors become very handy. The prices of the drinks are a bit high, but they're made in a way where no one can dispute their alcohol content. On weekends they play decent music, however, beware of the crowd that can congest the journey to the bar. Lots of eye candy here occasionally, crowd diversity varies with a tinge of tourist aura.
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I booked a small birthday party here (about 20 people). Obviously we weren't enough of a crowd to take up an entire floor, but the woman I made my reservation with told us to get there early and we'd easily be able to take over some space for ourselves.
She was right: we were there in plenty of time to claim the little upstairs loft area of the third floor, and it was a perfect space for 20.
The three stars in this review, though, are for the roofdeck, the multiple levels with different vibes, and the nice loft space for small parties. Social doesn't get any stars for service. We had to resolutely hunt down the one waitress all night (maybe she just didn't like climbing those stairs to the loft), and eventually most of us gave up and just braved the huge crowd downstairs to get drinks from the bar.
Overall, it was a fun party, but chances are I wouldn't come back just for regular drinks.
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Great place to go for a relaxing Happy Hour or late-night drink spot in HK. It seems there's always a table there and a good crowd. The drink prices are reasonable and the bartenders handle the crowd well.
The crowd tends to be a little young and fratty, not that there's anything wrong with that.
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typical sports bar, i went here to watch a football game w/ OSU fans in the back room and it was very cozy like a living room. however, i don't like sports bars and this one really didn't have anything to offer that i would come back for, except maybe going to get an afer work drink.
Social is a bit average or below-average as far as bars go. There isn't much character. The bartenders and wait staff can be difficult to flag down. The mixed drinks are often quite watery. Worst of all, the crowds here, even on weeknights, are insane. If you're into the frat boy / sorority girl scene, Social may be worth your time. Otherwise, I would not recommend going out of your way to have a drink here.
Pretty disappointing, although there were some definite ups and downs. The prices are pretty ridiculous given the quantities you get, is really the basic problem here. $6 for a 14 ounce beer...well, it's midtown. The calamari and the long islands were excellent, but way tiny, and left me wanting more! Also, the shots were teensy weensy little plastic cups, and when we asked if we could have bigger, we definitely got shot down!
The roof deck is cool, but small, and the crowd was very corporate on early friday. There was also a private party that we somehow ended up in the middle of, and when we decided to be honest and say we weren't a part of it, the waitress refused to bring us drinks. There are way too many good places for me to have to come back here any time soon.
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Social has several levels (including a roof deck), making it a convenient place to hold a party. Drinks are fine, the place is clean, the bathrooms are well lit. Just down fall down all those stairs after a night of hitting it hard.
Social isn't really my scene, but I can see how it would be for others. In the middle of midtown, you have to expect the touristy, frat-boy element, so if you're down with that, then cool.
I had a guinness which was decently poured, a tad on the cold side. Also had a manhattan that was decent.
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