It’s a rooftop bar, but make it a speakeasy.
Nestled away on the 18th floor of Flatiron’s Hotel Henri, Wallflower is a vinyl bar that brings a 70s speakeasy vibe to your traditional New York City rooftop bar. The latest venture from Parched Hospitality Group (PHG), Wallflower keeps up with the brand’s goal of bringing Australian hospitality to the Big Apple.
“We started spit-balling some cool ideas around opening a vinyl bar, like a listening bar, but not making it in a pretentious way where you sort of feel like you need to understand music at an innate level to feel comfortable in the space,” said Tom Rowse, Chief Strategy Officer at PHG. “We still wanted to tap into our overall mission of creating that very jovial welcoming, approachable Australian hospitality while still offering a unique experience like that.”
When you step off the elevator into Wallfower, it doesn’t feel like a typical bar — it feels more like you’re walking into a friend’s home, which, according to Rowse, was key in developing the space. The décor (all of which is available for purchase, like their vintage Pizza Hut lamp) taps into the 70s vibes that help bring the vinyl bar to life.
“Yes, it’s on the rooftop level. Yes, it has an amazing view of downtown Manhattan as well. But when you’re in the space, it feels like you’re in a living room. We really built the concept around that,” said Rowse. “We wanted to feel like you were at a mate’s place who has this really sick music set up and has an amazing bar there. We wanted people to feel like they were stepping back in time into sort of some 70s nostalgia, but really wanted to hold on to that sort of affluent living room vibe of a friend’s house.”
Wallflowers’ menu is the team’s take on elevated dive bar food. It nods to classics like wings, big pretzels and loaded fries but steps them up a notch. The flavors of most of the menu items, like the Bruschetta and Crisps or Breads with Dips, rotate regularly, so you can experience something different every time you visit.
The drink menu offers classic cocktails such as Whiskey Sours, Banana Daiquiris, and Vespers, while also playing with the drink options with the Pina Colada Highball, the Pornstar Martini, and Always Naked, Almost Famous.
“Our executive chef is a creative at heart. We said to him, we want to sort of peel it back from what we usually offer with our full-service restaurants into some classic bar food, but we also don’t want it to just basic wings, basic fries and his eyes lit up,” said Rowse. “He was able to sort of play in this whole new world of delivering this really cool take on what we see as classic bar food.”
Just as important as the menu offerings for Wallflower was the vinyl program. Every Thursday and Friday night, local DJs come in and spin records throughout the night, and Wallflower has hosted special theme nights.
Though the bar is attached to the hotel, Rowse said the bar clientele is pretty split between hotel guests and New Yorkers. That said, the crowds that have been coming to Wallflower have been discovering it on their own and have had great experiences.
“Flatiron is a cool mesh of residential and a lot of ad agencies and cool companies working in that area, so we get a good after-work crowd as well as a good regular crowd as well,” said Rowse. “Most of the time, the guests are quite surprised to find [Wallflower] here, everyone I’ve spoken to have been pleasantly surprised, which has been really fun.”
Wallflower is located at 37 West 24th St. and is open daily from 5 p.m. til late. For more information about Wallflower, visit holeinthewallnyc.com/wallflower.
