Upstate Invasion Weekend and Featured Cocktails

BurgerArtLooking for something to pair with our custom-ground Best Burger (with meat from Fleisher’s Craft Butchery)? How about one of our featured cocktails or some great beers we’ll be rotating through the draft lines this weekend! It’s an Upstate Invasion, as we welcome two breweries new to Jimmy’s No. 43 (and relatively new to the city). Catskills Brewery in Livingston Manor opened mid-2014 and is bringing two of their beers down for us to try. Chatham Brewing (from Chatham) will have three different beers. We’ll be working through the following kegs this weekend:

  • Farmer’s Daughter Rye IPA (Chatham)
  • Ghent Bent Belgian Style Dubbel (Chatham) – a 9% ABV
  • Maple Amber (Chatham) – made with local maple syrup
  • Ball Lightning Pils (Catskills) – a 5.5% ABV lager made with a surge of whole-cone Saaz hops
  • Devil’s Path IPA (Catskills) – a 7.5% ABV India Pale Ale named after The Catskills most harrowing trail

If you prefer spirits, we have some amazing cocktails we’re featuring on the bar menu:

  • Reverse Martini – We’re channeling our inner Julia Child with this Martini that is heavy on the (Uncouth) Vermouth
  • Manila Mule – Our Tito’s Vodka version of the “Moscow Mule” with ginger beer
  • Ginger Snap – Perfect for the season
  • Boulevardier – Our classic drink of Campari and Bourbon (made with Angel’s Envy)

We hope to see you this weekend!

Ringing in the New Year with Best Burger, New Beers

PorkBellyTacoIt’s a new year and we’re back to celebrate with some great menu items that you may have yet to try. The next time you see Jimmy, be sure to ask him about our unique (and custom ground) grass-fed beef burger that we order up from Fleisher’s Craft Butchery in Brooklyn. “To me, it’s the perfect burger,” Jimmy will tell you. Ask him why as you enjoy this super juicy burger yourself.
Our Pork Belly Taco may be the signature dish of the new Tito King’s Kitchen at Jimmy’s No. 43, with a perfect Filipino-Thai fusion flavor and styling. We source our pork directly from Flying Pigs Farms, which has been the hog provider for Pig Island the past several years. (Need more convincing? The New York Times recommends both dishes!)
We know that where we get our meat is important to you, our customers. We also believe in supporting our local farms and artisans (whether they are butchers or beer makers) and in bringing only the best ingredients to our kitchen.
If you’re looking for something to pair with, we have a couple special beers on draft this week: Our first keg of Tired Hands will be tapped on Thursday. We’re thrilled to offer the HopHands Pale Ale and beers from this great brewery outside of Philly.  We’ll also have
Kent Falls’ (CT) Anachronism Grätzer, a 5.0% ABV German/Polish ale brewed with oak smoked wheat and fermented with a farmhouse yeast culture to provide a subtle and delicate smoke flavor complemented by the earthy and piney dry hopping with German Tettnang.

And of course we have plenty of spirits, wine and ciders for all who imbibe.

And be sure to drop by this weekend for our 8th Annual Cassoulet weekend, featuring a Cassoulet Salon (Saturday), the Cassoulet Cookoff (Sunday) and a prix fixe Cocktails & Cassoulet Dinner on Monday.

Peace and Happy

IMG_0203As 2015 draws to a close, we want to wish everyone in Jimmy’s Community peace and happy. Every year, we like to reflect on the one that has passed, and this year was extraordinarily eventful for us. It quite literally rocked our world when our little corner of the East Village suffered a massive explosion and fire that took out many of our neighbor’s homes and businesses. But we would rather focus on the good times and our many friends, including  community/arts and non-profit partners from 2015:

  • Slow Food NYC and Slow Food USA
  • Grow NYC/Greenmarkets and the Regional Grains Projects
  • Heritage Radio Network – the home of Beer Sessions Radio!
  • Eating/Drinking/Laughing liberally
  • Edible Schoolyard NYC
  • NYC Brewers Guild
  • NYC Homebrewers Guild
  • Middle Collegiate Church/Pub Theology Group
  • East Village Independant Merchants Association
  • Fourth Arts Block/FAB NYC
  • Neighborhood Preservation Center (St. Mark’s church)
  • Lower East Side History Month
  • St. George’s Ukrainian Catholic Church and the annual East 7th Street Festival
  • Cooper Square Mutual Housing
  • Solar One
  • Farm on Kent/North Brooklyn Farms
  • Anthology Film Archives
  • Union Docs : Documentary Film Center
  • The Jerome L Greene Space of WNYC and WQXR
  • Taste NY
  • Lower East Side Ecology Center
  • Brooklyn Rescue Mission (Rev. Robert Jackson, Bed-Stuy)
  • Slow Money NYC
  • The Foodstand
  • Food+Tech Connect
  • Hearth Gods: Michael Yates Crowley and crew
  • State Senator Brad Hoylman
  • City Council Member Rosie Mendez
  • Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer

And we turned 10 this year (HuffPo wrote up a nice piece on our anniversary)! In honor of such an auspicious occasion, we added spirits to our bar this year and did an overhaul of our kitchen, launching Tito King’s Kitchen at Jimmy’s No. 43, which was well received by both the public, our regulars and the NYC food press (scroll down for more press links).

UPDATE: The prix fixe ticketed dinner/open bar for New Year’s Eve is almost sold out. The bar will be open all night for regular customers, drinking and a light ala carte menu. Join us!

And there’s still more to come before we ring in the New Year! Seasonal events include:

  • Annual Christmas-Day Lunch on Friday, December 25th: $25 gets you a plate with unlimited servings (while supplies last) of great fare from our menu, including our acclaimed Lechon whole roast pig
  • Our Annual Boxing Day Coat Drive will benefit Mary House, a women and children’s shelter in the East Village: Donate a coat (new or gently used) and your first drink is on us all afternoon on Saturday, December 26th
  • We’ll have an open bar package for Thursday, December 31st, as part of our New Year’s Eve Celebration: From 8 p.m.  to midnight, enjoy three hours of unlimited drinks and access to semi-private room with separate bar with champagne toast at 12 a.m. (Get tickets here.)
  • We are still accepting reservations for private parties through December 31st (e-mail foodkarma@gmail.com)

Please check out some of our most recent press re-caps:

We hope to see you during this holiday season and we wish you a safe and joyous end of 2015 and new year!

From Maine to Britain, From Wild-Fermented Cider to Cask Saturday

Brewer Eli Cayer of Urban Farm Fermentory - Portland, MEJimmy’s No. 43 has always been a place that visitors to NYC like to check out (or Orphans & Expats, when it comes to our Christmas-Day lunch!), so we love it when new folks come to town. This evening, we’ll be chatting with fermentor Eli Cayer of Urban Farm Fermentory in Portland, Maine. Eli is doing very cool things with mead and wild-fermented ciders (not to mention that mysterious concoction known as Kombucha). He’ll be dropping by for a meet-and-greet at the bar.

Then on Saturday, we’re bringing back the cask! We’ll have an amazing beer from England: J.W. Lees Harvest Ale. This classic English-style Barleywine (weighing in at a whopping 11.5% ABV) is brewed only once a year with the new harvest’s fresh floor malted Maris Otter malts and the classic English East Kent Goldings hops . Sure, we know it’s going to be a warmer-than-usual 12-12, but we’re still digging this beer and hope you’ll drop by to try it.

And don’t forget, we have New Year’s Eve packages and a party room available for your private celebrate (inquire here). We’re going out with a bang this 2015 (in the non-building exploding sense!), and we look forward to seeing friends both near and far in the closing weeks heading into 2016.

LIC Beer Project Takes Best American in Sixth Annual Battle of the Belgians

BotB2015_judgingWe had a great turn out for this year’s Battle of the Belgians (full beer list – many still available for purchase – is here), beginning Friday night with a blind tasting panel of judges that included Gregg Glaser (Publisher, Modern Distillery Age), Paul Zocco (Zok’s Homebrew Supply in CT), brewer Heather McReynolds (Sixpoint), Cat wolinski (Ale Street News) and Jonathan White (cheesemaker at Bobolink Dairy and Bakehouse).

From 25+ Belgian and Belgian-style beers, the judges awarded the following:

  • First Place: Oude Quetsche Tilquin à L’Ancienne – Plum Lambic Gueuze
  • Second Place: Cuvée Des Jacobins Rouge – Flanders Red Ale
  • Third Place: Saison Dupont

On Saturday, it was on to the People’s Choice awards as the 6th Annual Battle of the Belgians was underway. Their favorites (by popular vote):

  • Best American Belgian-Style: Trigger Rye by LIC Beer Project
  • Best Belgian: Triporteur Full Moon
  • “Best in Show”L De Dolle “Teve” 10 Triple

And, of course, bar owner Jimmy Carbone had his own personal favorites:

  • Hitachino Saison du Japan
  • Crooked Stave Wild Sage Lambic (on draught; sadly, it went very quickly)

This being the sixth year of the event, we were once again trying to decide who makes the best “Belgian.” Our first year, we wanted to prove that American Belgian-style beers would kick Belgian beers’ butts! However, we met many Belgian beer importers like Wendy Littlefield of Vanberg and DeWulf and Matthias Neidhart of B. United, with an inventory of beers that continue to win every year. So big cheers to the Belgian beer importers!!

Battle_of_Belgians_bottles