BY KELLY MARIE MANCUSO
One of the newest additions to Ridgewood’s burgeoning bar scene is Onderdonk & Sons, a cozy, old-world-style saloon nestled on the corner of Onderdonk Avenue and Menahan Street.
Opened in December 2014, Onderdonk & Sons is the latest endeavor of Brian Taylor and Louise Favier, the husband-and-wife team behind the Greenpoint Coffee House and the Pencil Factory Bar in Brooklyn.
Taylor and Favier were drawn to Ridgewood for its diversity and appeal as a close-knit community.
“We’re thrilled with the neighborhood,” Taylor said. “We weren’t trying to become a real destination. We just want to be a solid neighborhood bar for the people who live around here.”
It took months of scouting, pounding the pavement and knocking on doors before Taylor found the perfect location for Onderdonk & Sons.
“It took us a year, but in that year, we felt like we really got to know the neighborhood,” he said.
Walking into Onderdonk and Sons is like stepping back in time.
“We wanted an old time New York feel, like the New York of the 1930s and ‘40s,” Taylor said. Curved vintage banquets line the dark paneled walls, creating an intimate, speakeasy-style vibe. The long wooden bar and silver tin ceiling help create what Taylor called a “timeless New York” mood.
Onderdonk & Sons is a bar first and foremost. However, Taylor confessed that for years, both he and wife have wanted to include burgers on their menu, along with their impressive roster of beers and cocktails. “We’re more bar people than food,” Taylor explained. “We’re not trying to be a restaurant. All we want to do is to be a bar with a good burger at a reasonable price.”
Adhering to this philosophy, the burger and fries are currently the only food offerings at Onderdonk & Sons. The traditional, all-beef burger is served on a toasted bun with generous portions of lettuce, tomato and melted cheddar. “We’ve kept it simple and stayed away from the more artisanal bun and those types of things,” Taylor added. “We want to get the burgers right and think we’re going to stop there.” The bar also offers a veggie burger option.
The much-loved burger is part of a daily Happy Hour special offered between 4 and 7 p.m. For $10, you can get a burger with fries and a beer. The Happy Hour specials also feature $4 draught beers and $5 cocktails. The seasonal cocktail menu features classics such as the
Moscow Mule and more adventurous blends like the H.K. Rose, an intoxicating mix of rose wine, lavender-infused honey, rosewater and Dolin Rouge vermouth.
Starting April 11, Onderdonk & Sons will be offering weekend brunch service on Saturdays and Sundays between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. The all-inclusive brunch menu will include choice of coffee or tea, Bloody Mary, Mimosa or beer, and entree for $12.
The initial brunch menu will include eggs Benedict, eggs Florentine, huevos rancheros, French toast with blueberries and a dish called eggs Onderdonk, which is eggs Benedict with smoked salmon. “We want to keep it very simple, get that right, build the business a bit and go from there,” Taylor explained.
Their impressive beer menu includes twelve taps featuring locally brewed beer from Queens Brewery in Ridgewood and Braven Brewery in Buchwick. In May, Onderdonk & Sons will participate in Queens Beer Week, which will be held in Ridgewood this year. To celebrate the event, the bar will feature only Queens-made beer on all twelve taps for that week and beyond.
The main focus of Onderdonk & Sons is to cultivate a familiar neighborhood following as a bar with good burgers and great beer.
“Our philosophy is that it’s the same bar 365 days a year,” Taylor said.
Onderdonk & Sons
566 Onderdonk Ave., Ridgewood
718-555-1212
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