A New Year, a New Bar

I just discovered the bar/restaurant Fetch not far north of me in Yorkville (the less well-known name for what lies north of the Upper East Side), and I liked it.  I ate some very tasty dish involving a bowl full of hamburger, rice, string fries, and fried egg (much needed after awaking too late for lunch yesterday, sleeping until slightly after noon due to New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day karaoke that ended up lasting until 4am, during which I had the chance to do both “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” and “Pretty in Pink” in front of a friend who looks enough like Molly Ringwald that Ringwald was once mistaken for her — perhaps a fitting high note on which to exit and find a new performance-based pastime).

The nice-seeming bartender at Fetch was able to converse with Mexican barbacks in Spanish and with elderly customers in English about Voltaire and Mark Twain.  The walls were festooned with cute dog photos and the promise to hang any framed photos brought in of customers’ dogs.  And they have a mission statement devoted not only to good food and a friendship-fostering environment but to perpetual promotion of customer happiness and to finding homes for stray animals.

Not that I need a mission statement to embrace a bar — I would be unnerved to learn Lolita (where I host monthly debates) or Merchants (where I host a monthly social gathering of political junkies) had mission statements, unless I wrote them — but in combination, all the above things made me feel the place was at least making a good effort.  See you in one or more of these establishments — or Dresner’s across from me on York Avenue — in the new year.