Beer Table

Beer Table was a room with just three communal tables, pouring a changing roster of "rare and special beers" with snacks on the side^{1, 2}. As we put it then, the food was there to accent the beer, not the other way around. Justin and Tricia Philips waited almost six months for a liquor license, and when they finally opened at 427B Seventh Avenue, at 15th Street, on Saturday, February 2, 2008, the crowds came^{1, 3, 4}.

In 2011 the bar squeezed a 300-square-foot shop into Grand Central's Graybar Passage⁵. Beer Table Pantry, a retail version of the Brooklyn original, was set to open there on July 29⁶.

On April 3, 2013, the owners announced it was time for a bit more space, and a full kitchen^{4, 7}. They would look for a slightly larger location, still to be determined, and pass the torch at 427 Seventh Avenue to another restaurateur^{4, 7}. The Park Slope bar's last day was Saturday, April 27, while the Pantry in Grand Central kept going^{4, 7}.

That September, Roberto Santibañez, the chef and owner of Fonda, announced La Botaneria for the former Beer Table space, to open that fall². Later the storefront was BKLYN Cake Studio, a bakery on the ground floor of a seven-unit condo building, and its retail store closed in 2025 after eight years because the premises were sold^{8, 9, 10}. Beer Table itself is now a specialty grocery and beer store in the city's busiest train stations, with one shop on Grand Central's Main Concourse and another in the LIRR Concourse between the ACE and the 123¹¹.