Jimmys No. 43

Who wants to “drink like a monk”? We’ll be kicking off the Lenten season next week with our own special take on Mardi Gras/Carnivale, as we usher in our annual Liquid Lent (40 days of amazing beers, tastings and meet-and-greets!) when we’ll feature Belgians, abbey beers, large bottle format brews by the glass and some great programming heading into the annual NYC Beer Week (taking place from February 19-28).

Starting on Tuesday, February 9^th from 6 p.m., we celebrate“Carne-val,” our own special take remembering the origins of Mardi Gras/Shrove Tuesday. We’ll have a whole roast “Lechon” pig from Tito King’s Kitchen at Jimmy’s No. 43 (pay as you go) and some killer tunes courtesy of live music featuring the N’Orleans blues and jazz sounds of George Kilby Jr’s “Mardi Gras Revue.”

At midnight, we will segue into Liquid Lent: 40 Days of Drinking Like Monk, when we’ll feature Belgian and abbey ales along with some great tastings (look for an Orval Night – TBA and a Chimay Night on Thursday, February 25^th with plenty more TBA).

Inspired by a blogger who decided to live on beer for Lent, Jimmy’s No. 43 is joins five other East Village craft beer establishments (Burp Castle, ABC Beer Co., Malt & Mold, East Castle and Proletariat) to celebrate Liquid Lent, the time when we focus on renewal and wait for spring… all while drinking some amazing craft beer!

We expect beer luminaries to be dropping by for meet-and-greets and tastings all month long. We hope to see you as we celebrate the closing weeks of winter with Liquid Lent!

“Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it,
But we hae meat and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thankit.”
― Robert Burns

We’re very excited for the first time ever to host a Robert Burns night as the poet himself would have done: With fine whisky! We’ll be celebrating Foraged Cocktails week beginning tonight, January 25th, at 7 PM, with a Robert Burns Night and Whiskey Prix Fixe Tasting: Join guest host Brad Japhe for a night of poetry, whiskey and food pairings, as we sample eight different single malt whisk(e)ys from America and Scotland.

Tonight’s revelry will be followed by a full week of spirit-centric tastings and events as we welcome some of the region’s (and world’s) best whiskeys, mezcals, brandies and more for a full week of tastings and programming inspired by Amy Zavatto’s new book, Forager’s Cocktails: Botanical Mixology with Fresh, Natural Ingredients. Foraged Cocktails Week will offer the freshest and best ingredients for custom cocktails as well as many guided tastings by the distillers themselves.

Among the programming (subject to change):

• Spirits Sampling and Meet-and-Greet: We will be featuring custom cocktails (pay as you go) from different distillers throughout the week who will sample their spirits and chat about their distilleries with Neversink Apple Brandy (Thursday, January 28th) and both El Buho Mezcal and Catskill Provisions (Friday, January 29th)
• High West Spirits Meet the Distiller (Wednesday, January 27th, from 7-9 PM) – we’ll have High West founder David Perkins sampling whiskeys ($10 at the bar gets you food and whiskey samples)
• Foraged Cocktails Salon on Saturday, January 30th: From 1-4 PM we’ll have several panels and tastings, along with book signings by Amy Zavato, including John Henry (El Buho), Claire Marin (Catskill Provisions) and others TBD

Winter is a great time to get in the spirit(s), so be sure to join us this week for Foraged Cocktails!

Looking 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!

It’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.

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.

As 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:

• NY Times Review of Tito King’s Kitchen at Jimmy’s No. 43
• Saveur Review of Tito King’s Kitchen at Jimmy’s No. 43

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