Sweet Polly is a Credentialed Cocktail Bar, Hiding in Plain Sight

By Sarah Zorn

With would-be merchants clamoring to a score a piece of the action generated by the crowd-mobbed Barclays Center, you’d think the Park Slope/Prospect Heights corridor would be fully equipped with the basics. And yet, despite the density of restaurants, gourmet goods purveyors, bakeries and coffee shops inhabiting Flatbush, the retail strip has remained oddly devoid of a cocktail bar.

Enter Murat Uyaroglu, who’s already done his part to keep the area thoroughly caffeinated and WiFi-equipped, at his single origin-dispensing café, Hungry Ghost. Annexing the intimate corner space for a petite speakeasy, Sweet Polly, has allowed his regulars to continue their patronage well into the evening, and saved others a nightcap-seeking trek across the neighborhood to Olmsted.

Uyaroglu’s also assembled a crack team, commissioning partner Bruno Dias—formerly of The Musket Room, Mondrian SoHo and The Meatball Shop—to oversee the beverage menu.

Each more eye-catching than the last, cocktails include the #Instagramodel (a kelly green highball of St. Germain, gin and fresh cucumber juice, with a sassy veggie fan), the Golden Eye (making good on Uyaroglu’s established relationship with Stumptown, by addling cynar, averna, sherry and chocolate bitters to a base of cold brew), and The Bad Hombre, featuring a cinnamon stick-smoking, crème de cassis-bleeding shark, with a pool of tequila, vodka, lime, agave, yogurt and jasmine tea clutched between its jaws.

And with half of the food program devoted to oysters, it was wise to tap ex-Maison Premiere chef, Jared Stafford-Hill, to oversee the rest. Never one to be overshadowed by bivalves, his offerings extend well beyond plebeian bar bites.

Think cubes of yellowfin tuna, crested by green apple and celery, cigars of beef tartare wrapped in rings of radish, crosshatched cones of squid in a caper and olive tomato broth, and lacquered rectangles of pork belly, atop Tuscan kale and carrots.