White Slab Palace

"I don't quite understand what's going on here." - that's how my dining companion described her meal. Truth.

This was brunch. If you order the "baked eggs" be prepared for completely raw eggs. Mixing caviar with sour cream is a thing here. The food was puzzling. The mimosas were spectacular.

Also, the restaurant contains a hole in space and time so the wait staff actually comes from another dimension where they don't have waiters, so they are completely unfamiliar with the entire process of waiting tables. You'll have to remind them that they need to do things like take your order and give you silverware to eat with. But hopefully they are learning about our strange new world.

White Slab Palace is a a new Scandinavian bar on the LES. What makes it Scandinavian? I have no idea.... but there is a big ass stuffed bear (which looked at me funny).

We came for drinks late nightish so I can't comment on the food but I liked the space (clean lines with really big windows). The bartenders were super helpful but I wasn't a fan of the 2 mixed drinks we tried and ultimately settled on some IPA. The first was called Lavendar Lemonade and (as I guess I should have expected) tasted like a vodka flower. The second was I think called La Puebla and was a mix of smoky tequila, mescal and some other stuff. Tough to drink but maybe fun to sip? Beware the innocuous looking green pepper served with the La Puebla. My friend almost died after taking a big bite of the sucker. Seriously... the drink needs to be served with a warning label or at least a glass of milk on the side.

Good looking people were there and if you are reading this I heart you Scandinavian looking tattoo girl.

Update ************

If you have Benny the bartender be nice because he is the bomb.

If you like spicy food make sure you try the jalapeno popper. I also highly recommend the clams!

I love the look and decor of WSP, but that's the sum totaly of positive things I can say about this place.

My friend and I ordered the heffe-weiss from their list - unavailable. Seems like this is a problem other Yelp reviewers have experienced.

We ordered the jalepeno poppers. And waited for at least 30 minutes. When they arrived, we discovered that they were stuffed with shrimp, which my friend cannot eat. This seems like an important detail to include in the description on the menu. The staff was highly nonplussed by the fact that we couldn't eat our food.

To replace these, we ordered the potato pancakes. And waited 45 minutes. They never arrived. As far as I could observe, not a single additional patron was ordering food during that time, so not sure what they were doing in the kitchen. By the time we had to leave, the pancakes were still MIA.

Highly, highly disappointing. I will not return.

Came here on a Saturday evening and the place was pretty empty but filled up quickly. The drinks are well made and the bartender is friendly and helpful although the drinks themselves don't taste that great IMO. The Hibiscus cosmo was pretty but very watery and the Cherry version was a bit like a bitter version of children's Tylenol.

The Swedish influence is reflected in some of the drinks; Aquavits, Schnapps, and Elderberry syrup as well as the interior (open space, braches). The staff looks like they were recruited right from any Apple store (media/nerdy/hippie).

There were no food options whatsoever but instead of the standard cocktail nuts the bartender brough out tiny plates of rye bread with cheese, olives, and a slice of prosciutto so that was a nice touch.

Unlike many LES joints there is nothing obscure about this place- right on the corner with floor-to-ceiling windows.

This place is so forgettable that I don't remember even checking in here.
Then it hits me: drinks, late night, Milk and Honey was closed.

What I remember: the drinks were awful, service was incredibly slow for a place with only 5 people in the entire bar, and the smell of cigarette drifted through the window.

I would have had a better time on a park bench with some 40s enclosed in a paper bag.

Had dinner here on Saturday night, it was around 8pm and the place was fairly busy but not packed. All new places suffer from slow service but...this was awful.

Apps - Ok, nothing special

Oysters on the half shell, poorly chucked, shell everywhere

Seafood tower - $90 to share for two - rip off, 90% was oysters, half a tiny lobster, one shrimp, a dozen small smoked shrimp, maybe 3 small clams....that's it.

friands had the burger (good) and the lamb - Ok but very odd, served with all the rack unsplit, so very hard to extract meat off bone.

Wine by glass was pricey - and poor. Plenty of inexpensive good wine around, either drop the price or up the quality.

Good World Bar was always VALUE & quality, this place is neither yet, I wish them luck and I will give another try in a few weeks.

I don't really understand the hating on White Slab Palace. I liked their predecessor, Good World, and I like them. Granted, I only have been here once, for the first time this weekend.

I wandered in with my gentleman friend, giddy with joy after triumphing in my search for frames with the help of Moscot, across the street; and in need of a nice beer to celebrate. This was around 1 or so on Saturday.

The place was nearly empty; just one couple with a baby enjoying brunch, which looked super good, if pricey. The space is gorgeous, lovely floor to ceiling windows on two walls; rustic wood furniture with blue denim upholstery; large green industrial lights over the bar; and off in the front righthand corner, a low rough timber table with a cushy couch just for us.

We settled ourselves there, perused the menu, and decided on two beers we hadn't tried before, in the spirit of beer-adventure. Sadly, when we ordered the bartender regretted to inform us that they were out of both of those - and also out of our backup orders. Too sunny from the frame triumph for this to bother me, we ordered from their limited tap selection with a minimum of grumbling; which quickly turned to smiling when the bartender brought our beers to us on our couch and informed us that the next round would be on him.

We had a very nice, relaxed time, soaking in the ambiance, the tasty beers we ended up being very happy with, and chatting and watching passersby - a perfect Saturday afternoon. And we gave the bartender a generous tip for being so nice, and left talking about how nice a time we'd had and what a good place White Slab Palace is - albeit a nice place with a silly name.

Mr H and I stopped in for pre-dinner cocktails on our way to Allen & Delancey last Sunday night. What a great spot! Wish we could transport WSP to SF. We passed up what looked like outstanding desserts to return for nightcaps there afterward instead.

A sophisticated, creative drink menu blew the drinks we had at Milk & Honey a couple nights before right out of the water (with the added bonus of not having to play guessing games with the waitstaff to order them), easily nudging up into the Bourbon & Branch/Cyrus range of em'effing mixological arete.

If we lived close by, we'd spend a few weeks sampling each of the house infusions (uh... vodka based, I guess? We were distracted by the yummy boozage at closer range and forgot to ask). Almost all of them sounded worth shaving off a level of hepatic health for.

Our 'tender was very personable and a pleasure to have our drinks mixed by.

Notably, but of less importance, the space was great - very open & airy, with denim upholstered stools (though dismounting is a sobriety test - they're nosebleed height), chunky raw wood tables & benches, and oddball industrial repurposed light fixtures that remind me of my pop's old metal workshop.

Yep yep. Mid-60s chillrock makes the perfect soundtrack for sipping a hard "sweet tea" on a warm summer night.

I had always wondered what it would be like for a little person to walk into a bar and get on a bar stool.

White Slab Palace satisfied that curiosity.

I stumbled into this place to bide the time as I was on my way from one attraction to the other. I was, literally, gobsmacked by how tall the bar stools and bar were. I had never had to CLIMB my way up to a bar. I'm 5'3" and never have had trouble mounting up to a bar. It was hysterical. The bar seats came up to my neck. I friggin' loved it.

What didn't I love? Our bartender, perfectly nice, didn't seem to know anything. I ordered oysters and she had to make sure the kitchen actually had them (apparently that enormous chalkboard they write specials on is always inaccurate). She didn't know where the oysters were from or what the names of them were. My date ordered a Tempranillo only to find out they only had two of the six reds they were supposed to have. I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she was new. Either way, I had these crazy delicious oysters but don't know the name of them or where they were from. Boo on that.

The menu descriptions of the cheeses were WAY off. We ordered a cheese that was supposed to be strong, salty, and creamy. In real life, it was mild to the point of being bland and hard.

The decor of the place is amazing. Floor to ceiling huge windows, huge wooden tables, I really can't say enough about the bar. It's really just that cool.

They also serve tequila shots in cute little glasses.

I didn't hate the place, but didn't love it, either. It's great for nameless oysters and random, rarely ordered European apertifs.

It's worth going back just to climb the bar again ;-)

Insanely slow food service ruins a perfectly good place to drink. Stop in for an expensive cocktail if you want but avoid like the plague if you're hungry.

We have been stopping in for drinks at White Slab about once a week, since it's around the corner from our place. On Tuesday we decided to get dinner there.

It was a really simple order: one medium beef burger and one fish burger. The restaurant was half-empty.

90 minutes later we were still waiting on our food -- this for two dishes that you could prepare from _scratch_ in less than 10-15 minutes. The table next to ours was also slow in receiving their food.

The staff told us that the issue was that there was a reviewer there from NY Magazine, and the owner was cooking in the kitchen. I don't know what the story was but I can tell you that in the course of an hour I saw maybe 6 plates of food come out of the kitchen.

After waiting 90 minutes -- far longer than I would at a random place, but as I said, I wanted to like this restaurant -- I asked for the manager or owner because it obviously wasn't the waiter's fault that no food had arrived. I waited another 10-15 minutes and nobody came. So we threw some money on the table to pay for my drink, and walked out. Nobody noticed or asked us why we were leaving.

(Oh, and this place that charges $10-15 for a drink, doesn't take credit cards. I can understand a dive bar being cash-only, but when a place is probably ringing up $50-$75 a person who walks in, it's just obnoxious.)

10 minutes later, we had burgers in hand at the French bistro around the corner. Had we just gone there, we could have saved half the evening.