Cronin and Phelan’s in Astoria, a perfect specimen of a family-friendly Queens Irish pub that still has its balls after 100 years. We went there recently, as we explored neighborhood bars throughout the borough with our sherpa Roger. Roger of Queens. First place we hit was the Dog and Duck in Sunnyside, then it was on to the classic diviness of the Station Café (not as Parisian as you might think) in Woodside.
And on to Cronin and Phelan ….
After the dank delights of the Station, we hopped a cab (Queens is huge, Roger was ambitious, and screw the MTA on a weekend, man) and headed to Astoria, named after America’s first sociopath-millionaire, John Jacob Astor, who never set foot there. True story.
But we set foot at Cronin and Phelan’s with all alacrity and vigor. It’s a bar. A good bar. An old bar. An Irish pub, the kind you find in Queens, for men. Men that like to drink beer and eat beef. And going there makes you want to write about it like Hemingway. The beer was cold. The owner was warm. And it was good.
Okay, Cronin and Phelan’s is a clean, well-lighted place with a bar on your right and a dining area on your left, right there on a busy section of Broadway near 4oth Street. It’s not as manful and manly as Hemingway said he was (maybe it once was), but it is half a sports bar and definitely would be a great place to watch a game with the fellas. It’s other half is a family-friendly dining room. I dug it. Sat at the end of the bar and Roger of Queens introduced us to Mike Peacock (just like the bird), the owner. Mike was a delight—a real gent—and told me the bar’s been there since 1902. Over a hundred years. Teddy Roosevelt was brand new when this joint opened. I love the history in NYC, even if places will vanish before your very eyes and break your heart a little. Hey, billionaires need their 4-bath condos. Don’t get too attached to anything in New York.
Anyway, I took a few pix of the exterior of Cronin and Phelan’s and inked up this little number, to be published along with 49 other great good places of New York in 2018, in my upcoming Rizzoli book called (off all things!) Great Good Places of New York: 50 Favorite Joints of the Five Boroughs. You can buy the original art here.
Next up: Long Island City
From Astoria we cabbed it over to Long Island City for a bite and a bev at The Creek and the Cave, and from there over to Dutch Kills, and that, my friends, is a story for another blogpost.
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