The 24 Best Restaurants On The Lower East Side - New York - The Infatuation

"If you can’t get a table at Cervo’s, you could try for a bar seat at nearby Eel Bar. It’s from the same team, and its menu features similarly generous amounts of olive oil and aioli. But only using this Basque spot as a Cervo’s backup plan would be selling it short. Eel Bar is a great place to bring a group, order martinis, and then wine and then more wine, all while snacking for several hours. Crowd into a tavern-like wooden booth, and share fried mussels and rainbow trout pil pil the texture of velvet. Reservations are released two weeks in advance. Walk-ins are accepted in the dining room as well as at the 13-seat bar. When we arrived around 5pm on a Tuesday, we had no trouble getting a table, and there were a good number of seats that seemed to be open throughout the night." - bryan kim, neha talreja, will hartman, willa moore, molly fitzpatrick