have gone for cocktails a few times; wonderful atmosphere for an intimate and cozy night of drinks, with delicious cocktails and the best service! everyone is so willing to chat and make you feel at home :)
It was a dreary Saturday morning in the lower east side. My SO and I had made the arduous commute from NJ to NY, with the hopes of tasting the sweet nectar of the honey pancakes of the golden diner, just around the corner. After a 25 minute wait in the line, hiding from the rain tainted acidic from the noxious fumes of the industrial complex, sharing the protective awnings of never ending construction with piles of human excrement, the hostess of golden diner told us we'd have a 45 minute wait ahead of us. Fine. I put down my number and went to finding a cafe or book store for me and my better half to hide from the terrible weather in. Cue Round K by Sol. After a short walk around the block, we found Round K and were greeted by a small coffee bar with less room for walking than most smaller studio apartments in NY. We told the waitress "2 for here", wondering if "here" was even an option in this broom closet of a cafe. To our surprise, the waitress led us to the back of the bar, where a non-descript wall-colored door opened into a dark, moody, and enticing smoking room with glass candlestick holders adorning tables of marble and walls of purple velvet. If not for the early 2000s rave-pop music blaring at just too loud of a volume, I would have enjoyed it in there. We were given a menu and approximately 25 minutes to pick our selection of overpriced, overcomplicated "specialty coffees" that sounded intriguing enough for us to take the bait. We ordered a "toasted butter latte" and an "egg cappuccino" for a total of $22. Then we waited. And waited. Perhaps 20 minutes later, we were brought out drinks. In appearance, you could have called them rustic, perhaps appetizing. As in name, they were intriguing enough to taste, and I found myself pleasantly surprised by their complexity of flavor. However, I was soon unpleasantly surprised by their two major downfalls -- the drinks were both lukewarm (perhaps due to the 20 minutes that they were probably left out for before being brought to our table) and the egg in the cappuccino quickly cooked to form a drink that was as gagging as an "omelette in an espresso" sounds. My partner and I had barely 5 sips between the two of us. After 10 minutes of debating complaining to the waiting staff, we asked if our drinks could be reheated. The coffees were taken from us with the promise of being returned at a drinkable temperature. Instead, the waitress returned 5 minutes later saying that she was unable to reheat the drinks as it would "change the quality of the milk in the drinks", then left. We sat, dumbfounded. A few minutes later, the barista came to our table to re-explain the issue with the milk texture before asking if she could make us new drinks. Torn between having to pay $22 + tip for 5 sips of coffee and being forced to drink another two terrible coffees, I sat at a loss for words. I politely declined, meekly spouting some excuse that we were "already too full" and dismissing the embarrassed waitress. 1/5 stars. The confused decor, the cramped layout, the nauseating drinks, and the naivety of the wait staff are excused only by the 50% refund we were given as we walked through the door for the first and last time.