New York Magazine, July, 2007
This old dive isn't new, but the burger meister who did time at the Corner Bistro is, and he has a knack for broiling burgers.
Full list of The City's Best New Burgers
New York Magazine, February, 2007
The burgers listed on the tabletop menu as a half pound of ground beef, as it turned out, were all that and more. The Crow Burger is a bacon-cheeseburger; the Classic is baconless. Both are served on paper plates and come with raw onion, crinkle-cut pickles, iceberg lettuce, and rather anemic tomatoes. You have a choice of cheesbeAmerican or Cheddar, and ketchup (Heinz) or mustard (Gulden's), and that's about it. As for the beef, it was remarkably fresh and nicely broiled with a rough, salt-crusted char; the patties were irregularly hand-shaped, loosely packed, and fairly juicy. Standard-issue sesame-seeded buns served their purpose well in being supremely squishy, melding quickly with the cheese and beef into one delicious, harmonious whole. In short, the burgers at the Stoned Crow did indeed rock.
Full review
Best Pool Joint - Let's be honest: The one thing that is absolutely crucialto a good pool bar is not a collection of straight cues,
not a true table,not a cone of chalk or a high level of competition. No, the secret heart of a good pool bar is a good jukebox.
If you are serious about pool, you go to a billiards parlor; If you want to get lubed up and feel like you're in a movie, you get
some quarters and go looking for the best soundtrack. It's a tight race, but I have to go with the Stoned Crow, a West Village
basement bar presided over by owner Betty Gordon. In addition to keeping order in the pool room, Betty has stocked the jukebox
with a great mix of classic rock, disco nostalgia,heavy metal and newer alternative albums. The gallery of rock portraits in the
Men's room helps you get in the mood, and it doesn't hurt that the bar has straight sticks, a true table and chalk.
Time Out New York
This Village hideaway is the home court of the bar-billiards
team to beat - thanks to owner Betty Gordon, a big booster
of her pub's four squads. If you can get past the narrow
bar filled with NYU kids, the back room is a pool utopia:
Plaques commemorating team victories line the wall, the
equipment is in great shape, and there's even a lump
of rare hand chalk. (Note that the table is sometimes
reserved for league play.) To complete your hustler
image, the bar provides free smokes (and candy cigs)
- and with the frequently long wait list. you'll have
plenty of time to puff.
New York City's Best Dive Bars
The Stoned Crow is the kind of place that you could walk past for years
without really noticing, and that's a shame because this West Village
haunt is one of the friendliest bars in the city. Behind the small subterranean
door there lies a long, dark bar and a back room with plenty of tables
for eating, boozing and watching some serious pool playing. The unpretentious
locals who inhabit the joint - a collection of aging frat boys, actors,
firemen, layabouts, NYU students and aspiring pool players who carry
their own sticks - are more laid-back and cooler than teh people you'll
find at the tourist trap bars on nearby Bleeker Street.
Old concert posters and movie stills line the walls and the ceiling,
and the bathrooms are the best-decorated dive bar bathrooms I've ever
seen: rock photos in the men's room, and movie star pinups in the ladies'
room. If you take a liking to vintage Paul Newman and Robert Redford,
or shirtless Brad Pitt, or Speedo-clad Antonio Banderas, then bar-owner
Betty, almost always lording over the pool table in back, can provide
you with copied to take home.
Of all the animal-named bars in the West Village - Blind Tiger, White
Horse, Slaughtered Lamb, Kettle fo Fish, Lion's Den - the Crow is the
best.
Birds of a feather flock to this Village "basement" to experience a "real
bar" where drinks are a "bargain", the "jukebox rocks" and the
going is "very casual" - aside from the pool action in the "big
back room", "overseen" by an owner with a "list of rules"; though
it "flies under the radar", fans crow they "could use more like
this one."
