The Verdict
ATTABOY is on Eldridge Street in the Lower East Side — in the former Milk & Honey space that Sam Ros and Sasha Petraske established as the template for the modern craft cocktail bar — and Sam Ross and Michael McIlroy operate it on the principle that a cocktail bar should serve the guest's specific preferences rather than a fixed menu. There are no reservations, no printed menus, and no cocktail names: the bartender asks what flavours, spirits, and styles interest the guest and creates the cocktail from that conversation.
The Attaboy cocktail programme reflects Ross and McIlroy's specific knowledge: the same intelligence that produced the Paper Plane (Ross's invention) and the industry's most cited balanced cocktails applied to the real-time personalisation of each drink for each guest. The conversation about preferences — citrus or spirit-forward, boozy or refreshing, what mood, what time — produces cocktails that communicate genuine curiosity about what each guest specifically wants.
The Eldridge Street location provides the cultural context: the former Milk & Honey space where the modern craft cocktail movement's most influential bar operated, now housing the programme that its alumni developed as the next expression of that specific philosophy of genuine hospitality applied to spirits.
Why It Works for a First Date
Attaboy's no-menu conversation — the bartender asking the first date what they want in a cocktail and then making it — creates the most specifically personalised available New York first date experience. The conversation about preferences reveals genuine character. The cocktail that results communicates what genuine attention to what someone specifically wants looks like.
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