“The Girls” Get It Right at Kinda Nice

By Jayson Buford

Patty Dennison is setting up outdoor seating in preparation for Kinda Nice’s opening at 5 p.m. when I pull up. It is a process that, while easygoing, is less a tedious chore than a meditative reflex for hands-on restaurateurs like Patty and her co-owning partner, Ally Marrone. I walk in as bartenders and cooks are helping Marrone, arranging certain tables just so, in the way she’s taught them she wants them to look, perpendicular and vertical. Kinda Nice’s space is triangular and chic—half exhibit, half restaurant. Downstairs a club called Shenanigans was, at the time, set to open but was not yet complete (it is now, on Fridays and Saturdays, from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m.).

Courtesy of Kinda Nice

Today is one actually nice day in a year that has been full of stress blended with the unbridled optimism that comes with opening a business in a precarious industry that is now Dennison and Marrone’s livelihoods. Grand Army, the Boerum Hill cocktail bar the partners worked at prior to this opening, was practice—a test run before they decided to open their own shop. The two are close, their friendship forged in the fire of working elbow-to-elbow in the New York hospitality business. Their report and chemistry are readily observable and bolstered by mutual respect. “Ally had another opportunity, but Grand Army was near her apartment. She fell in love with the bar working there; I fell in love with the bar going there as a patron because it was a comfortable space. So that’s what we wanted to prioritize here. We’re doing some technically sound things, but we don’t rub your nose in it,” Patty said.

If there is something the duo could (and probably should) brandish more often about their three-sided bar on a geometrically unconventional block, it’s how Patty and Ally maintain its casual, approachable warmth without moonshotting the menu’s prices. This city—and this neighborhood, in particular, once known as Los Sures by a formerly vast Puerto Rican community—is no longer one where working-class folks can afford to live, create art, or go outside to drink and eat and thrive. The transformation isn’t lost on the Kinda Nice owners. “New York is expensive as hell, so it was important for us to ensure anyone can afford to have a beer or a cocktail and a good time here,” Dennison tells me. It’s why the Modelitos on offer are $4; not bad if you’re struggling to make rent, or got sick and had to take an unpaid day or two off. “This will always be four dollars so anybody can come here and have a drink.”

The narrow space—designed by friends Sydney Moss and Chelsea Burger, who filled it with bright whimsy and joyful swag—may be defined by its bar, but the menu isn’t, and going for dinner can dispel any suspicion that it’s “just” a solid cocktail bar. My order was deviled eggs and wedge salad to start, capped with a juicy, well-executed single-patty smash burger better than it has any reason to be, given its ubiquity around the borough. The chicken sandwich is fun, too—perfect for carb-loading before you go downstairs to dance it all away. Also fun is the rotating dessert menu, where every night a new “Chef’s Pick” is featured (key lime pie paired with a chocolate chip cookie when we visited). “We’re going for American diner classics,” Dennison said.

Courtesy of Kinda Nice

The name is indicative of Patty and Ally’s approach, as well as their reception by grateful neighbors. Dudes sit outside nursing beers, cooks are happy to drink when the night is over, and the characters in Williamsburg have been supportive. As they reached out for guidance on opening Kinda Nice, the pair realized that bars owned by women were depressingly lacking in New York, a fact made crystalline when they went looking for investment capital. “People referred to Ally and I as ‘the girls’ in this process,” Dennison said. Marrone thinks this should be a non-issue, but if it is, they have no problem leaning into it.

Another hurdle for their funding goals: firm executives only seemed interested in long (or short) shots tied to the A.I. blitz. However, Patty and Ally hedged on a shared craving for, and value of, deeply human experiences. Their rebuttal is organically intelligent and physically manifest, a space where human connection flourishes, the sweet spot between a place of business and a lifetime of memories. The neighborhood slowly drifting in and out and arriving at the same conclusion has been rewarding. But it’s not just their pals passing through; it’s been charmed neighbors spreading their gospel via word of mouth.

“I had a friend come in, and she asked, How many people do you know at the bar right now?” Dennison told me.

“None!” she glowed.