The Most Romantic Bar Crawl in Brooklyn
Photo by Austin McAllister
Olympia
54 Jay Street
The walk west on Water Street isn’t the most scenic—at least, the last time we tried to navigate its snowy unshoveled sidewalks we had our heads down looking for ice—but you do get the occasional glimpse of a close-yet-distant Manhattan. Get nearer to DUMBO, though, and you start to see the Manhattan Bridge and maybe start to notice the Belgian-blocked streets that help make both neighborhoods notable. And then you’re at Olympia! When we first started coming to the neighborhood regularly, this Jay Street storefront was a deli where we purchased pouches of Bazzini peanuts. But Ajima’s closed in 2011, shortly reborn as this addition to the DUMBO bar scene, from the owners of the happy-hour hopping 68 Jay just across the street. The low lighting here seems even lower thanks to the dark blue walls, and on the night we visited the soundtrack was all jazz, which is what you want in a wine bar, because like wine it seems fancy without actually being that fancy.
