Lucien, the best bar in New York for writers

When I search my memory for a favorite bar, I’m struck by thoughts about bars of legend that I can only fantasize about. My drinking life is a tale of three cities — Chicago, New York and Paris — but since I’ve spent most of my adulthood in New York, it’s hangouts in Manhattan, some long gone, that first come to mind. And establishments where writers and reporters liked to drink hold for me a privileged position.

I wish that I could have bought a cocktail in the 1930s for the tragically brilliant novelist Dawn Powell at the now defunct Lafayette Hotel in Greenwich Village, or at the nearby Brevoort Hotel on Fifth Avenue and 8th Street. Or could have had a glass of Pouilly Fumé or Calvados with Georges Simenon’s police superintendent Maigret at the fictional Brasserie Dauphine.

The Billy Goat Tavern in Chicago (its cheezborgers made famous by John Belushi) has survived the relocation of the once neighboring Chicago Sun-Times. But Louie’s East in New York, another cherished refuge near the Daily News building, did not outlive the crosstown move of what was once the country’s largest daily newspaper.

After Louie’s closed, I graduated to The Lion’s Head, a wood-paneled retreat where newspaper people with literary ambitions mingled with literary types who wrote for newspapers. When The Lion’s Head shut down in 1996, I found a reasonably literary West Village substitute, Café Loup on 13th Street, but it, in turn, closed. To the rescue came John Edgar Wideman, who introduced me to what is now the best bar in New York, Lucien, located at First Avenue and First Street in the East Village and stumbling distance from my office. Lucien Bahaj, the charming Moroccan-born francophone who started Lucien in 1998, liked to regale me with stories about writers, some of whom I knew, and I was happy to speak with him in French. A pleasantly odd memory of Lucien is of dining with Don DeLillo, and of our mutual friend Vince Passaro remarking that DeLillo was sitting directly under a photograph of Joan Didion.

Sadly, Lucien Bahaj died a few months before Covid, but his café survived the pandemic and is ably maintained by his son, Zac. In this crowded and narrow space, I recommend the elbow-shaped table for five near the front for early drinks or dinner.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s May 2023 World edition.