In 2008 the way into Apotheke was a door on Doyers Street under a red awning that read "Gold Flower Restaurant"1. Behind it was a candlelit lounge full of apothecary paraphernalia, like Dr. Jekyll's Victorian-era lair, where Albert Trummer and three other "doctors" worked a five-ton marble bar1. Our old review called it the bar as apothecary, in a sleepy Chinatown alley far from the beaten nightlife trail.
The alley has a past. Doyers Street runs just 200 feet and bends in the middle; the Hip Sings and the On Leongs centered their activity on it, and the street, or at least its bend, came to be called the Bloody Angle for its once fierce mob wars1, 2. Since the bar opened, write-ups have called the space a former opium den1, 3. The history Bedford + Bowery traced for 9 Doyers is tamer: a four-story brick building, once a tobacco factory, that opened as a lodging house on April 1, 1885, for people forced out of overcrowded tenements, and took in more than 22,000 people in a single year2. A coffee shop held the ground floor in the 1970s, among other businesses2.
In June 2010 the fire department went undercover at the bar, which had recently been on "The Real Housewives of New York City"4. Trummer faced two counts of reckless endangerment for allegedly pouring booze on the bar top and setting off a blaze4. "No one got hurt," he allegedly told police on the way to the precinct4.
Apotheke is still at 9 Doyers, where the only clue to the door is a small sign that says "Chemist"3. It has since opened more locations in New York and Los Angeles and put out a book on making medicinal cocktails at home3. Our old headline promised the cure for what ails you; by 2025 it cost $21 to $24 a drink3.
Researched October 2026.