Attaboy’s origin begins with New York City’s Milk & Honey, the speakeasy-style bar founded at 134 Eldridge Street by the late bar pioneer Sasha Petraske, on December 31, 1999. When the clock struck midnight, the new millennium began. In many ways, it was also the beginning of the cocktail renaissance.
Eric Medsker
Three years later, the groundbreaking bar moved into a bigger space further uptown (now closed), and two Milk & Honey veterans, Sam Ross and Michael McIlroy, opened Attaboy in the Eldridge space in March 2012. Attaboy would go on to flourish, taking on its own distinct, high-energy persona, and its bartenders would go on to popularize several drinks now considered essential parts of the modern classic canon, like the Penicillin and the Paper Plane.
A decade later, Attaboy is still going strong and has cemented its place as one of the world’s most important cocktail destinations.
The bar opened with a skeleton crew, Ross remembers. “We had the original five bartenders, including myself and Michael,” he says. The game plan: keep Milk & Honey’s high-end classic cocktails and eight-seat bar within the narrow, 500-square-foot space, and change almost everything else.
That meant no more reservations, no suspenders or vests, and no jazz.
“We were stripping away some of the fussiness that came with Milk & Honey,” says Ross. “We wanted a place where you could get an amazing cocktail, but not a special-occasion place.”
Eventually, the team grew, adding barbacks, a host, and more bartenders. The lights went lower, the music went louder, and guests ranged from tourists who spotted Attaboy on must-visit lists, to a late-night crowd of hospitality industry regulars simply seeking a well-made Daiquiri or a beer and a shot.
Christian Torres
Of note, there’s no cocktail menu here. While classics and well-known originals like the Penicillin or the Greenpoint (a McIlroy riff on the Manhattan) are the best sellers, Attaboy is the sort of place where bartenders will engage in a conversation about guest preferences, then deliver a well-practiced drink based on that feedback. There is no “cowboy-ing,” or developing drinks on the fly, says Ross. Consistency is key.
Today, the bar “hums from start to finish,” according to Ross. Although Attaboy opened an outpost in Nashville in 2017 under the purview of Brandon Bramhall, one of the “original five” bartenders, don’t expect to see more Attaboys in every city. “We’re not looking to expand further.”
That said, the original Attaboy will gain a little more space in early 2024 when an adjacent wine/tapas/spritz bar opens. It’s still unnamed but will be “right next door as a place to have a glass of wine and chill before or after Attaboy.”
The extra space should help ease one of the pain points of having a small footprint, and massive popularity: Attaboy’s ever-present waitlist. “Unless you’re strategic about when you’re getting in there, 90% of the time you’ll be put onto a waitlist,” says Ross. “No one likes to be told no.”
The bar has been celebrating its 10-year anniversary with a series of industry parties and seminars, including education about Attaboy’s roots. “We want to give a sense of history about Milk & Honey, and how important Sasha Petraske was to all this,” says Ross. “It’s important for the current and future generations of bartenders to know that it all came from somewhere.”
