1/18/14 - The Half Pint in Greenwich Village

We made it on a streak! Two weeks in a row, after two months of failure. I'd say this is a rousing success. I do have to ask you all the bare with me as I try out this food blog thing. I'm learning. As such, yet again, no food pictures. I do have a really bad picture of myself and my buddy Nick, so you'll get to see that soon. Whatever, to make an omelette you gotta break a few eggs (a little brunch joke for you).

Front of The Half Pint

Anyway, to make it to The Half Pint, we had to take a little trek into Manhattan. The beauty of this city though is how accessible it all is. That's what makes the quest to find all the drunk brunches possible. No need to worry about parking, no need to worry about how we're gonna get there. It's all at our feet.

The Half Pint is a nice little craft beer bar, right by Washington Square Park and a ton of NYU. I imagine it's frequented by NYU students, particularly those that like good beer as opposed to watered down American macros. We arrived and were being put at a small high table, but asked to sit in a cozier booth, and were moved to a small nook in the back. We were given our menus on paper, as we were informed that a new chef had just started and so the menu had changed a bit. This was a little disappointing since I had checked the menu out online as I was picking our next spot, and some of the items I was excited about (like a Bloody Mary featuring bacon) were not on it anymore.

Our server informed us that the popular item on the menu was the Breakfast Nachos. These did sound quite tasty, waffle fries with eggs, bacon, cheese, some salsa and sour cream. None of us were really feeling that though. I wound up getting the "Two Handed BALT," and my friends got French toast and a chicken sandwich. For an extra $16 we got unlimited bloodies, mimosas and what they called brunch punch. We also ordered a set of 4 banana nut muffin tops as an appetizer.

The muffin tops were decently sized, but as one of my friends commented the look like they came  out of an EZ-Bake oven. They tasted pretty good though, and came with a strawberry cream cheese that went well with them. The drinks were pretty good too. The Bloody Mary here came with lime and some olives. I could taste the bit of olive brine in the drink, which added a nice balance to the spiciness. The brunch punch was basically champagne with a little bit of simple syrup and some bits of fruit. It had a nice bit of dryness to it that was balanced by a touch of sweetness.

The previously mentioned terrible picture of Nick and myself (left to right)

My friend Max really liked his French toast. It came accompanied by two massive chicken sausages that probably could have been the centerpiece of a meal on it's own. He was quite glad he went with that instead of the chicken sandwich. Nick got his chicken sandwich (follow long enough and you may notice a trend with him), which came on a moderately soft bun with what looked like roasted peppers and cheese and accompanied by fries.

My BALT also came with fries. It was a little smaller than I expected, when something is described as "two-handed" I expect it to need two hands to hold. But it hit the spot, nice salty bacon, cool tomato and really creamy avocados. Not the best BALT but one of the nicer ones. The fries were the real highlight for me. I'm always a fan when a place handcuts their own potatoes for frying, it's a simple process but adds so much more than the frozen variety. These were salty, crunch yet still fluffy. Just what the BALT needed on the side.

The service at The Half Pint did start off a little slow. I'm not sure if our server was initially really busy or what but it did take a while to get our first set of drinks and the first few refills. This did eventually pick up though and by the end she was on top of us and attentive. She was nice overall though, service with a smile.

Overall the Half Pint was a nice place for brunch. We each spent about $34 before tip for the muffin tops, drinks and entrees. I'd give The Half Pint 3.75 out of 5 Bloody Maries.