With the Quiet Few, the neighborhood dive bar evolves
Iam not one of those people who is nostalgic about my college years, but I do miss Links, the bar in town where everyone I knew hung out. The floors were sticky, the pool table beckoned, and there was a heavy glass jar eternally filled with pickled eggs nobody seemed to eat. It was a perfect dive bar, and I miss it because perfect dive bars are increasingly hard to come by.
This isn’t my imagination. Much has been written about the disappearing dive, in cities from coast to coast. Back in the distant year of 2016, my colleague Beth Teitell wrote: “There’s no definitive tally of Boston’s dive bar die-off, but here’s what is known: Between 2011, when writer Luke O’Neil published ‘Boston’s Best Dive Bars,’ and last month, when two obsessed readers completed a crawl of almost all the bars listed, about 20 of the 70 or so Boston dives closed.” But we sure do have a lot of luxury condos.
Here I have some existential questions: What makes a dive bar a dive bar? Must the food be bad and the booze basic? Does it have to have history, or might one open a new dive bar? Can this endangered species be repopulated or is it just gone once it’s gone?
I am here to argue for evolution. The dive bar can change, maybe even for the better. These spaces haven’t always been welcoming to all comers, for one thing. Maybe a better term now is “neighborhood bar” — the quintessential local hangout, with a warm welcome and cold drink for anyone who might be inclined to pull up a stool.
When I think about the future of dive bars, I think about the Quiet Few in Jeffries Point, East Boston.
Named after a song by the band Tomahawk, the bar just celebrated its fourth anniversary. It made it through the worst of the pandemic, and now, again, it feels like it should: pleasantly crowded, both spirited and relaxed, filled with laughter and music and trivia night questions and Bruins playoff games, sound on. There is shuffleboard in the back. The website describes the Quiet Few as a
The East Boston tavern has an old soul and a new sensibility
“neighborhood whiskey tavern.” There is a hashtag frequently deployed: #topshelflowbrow.
“We don’t take ourselves seriously at the end of the day,” says co-owner Josh Weinstein. “It’s burgers, whiskey, and cans of beer. It’s meant to be fun and inviting and inclusive and no pressure and an extension of your living room.”
That’s just how it feels, only with a better collection of whiskey. There are about 150 selections, with a concentration on bourbon, Weinstein’s particular passion. But there is also rye, Japanese whisky, Scotch, and more. Sometimes regulars collaborate on the ever-growing list. They’ll bring something they’re excited about from home for Weinstein to try, and he’ll track it down and bring it into the bar.
“There’s always a $200 glass whiskey you can have, but also some really good $12 whiskeys. I want it to be accessible,” Weinstein says. The Quiet Few is a neighborhood bar — “where people congregate and celebrate and commiserate, where local gossip happens. It’s designed to not be strange that we see the same faces in three or four times a week.” Yes, it is indeed possible that everybody knows your name.
The menu encourages regulars, too, with appealing food and reasonable prices. Chef Scott Jensen (the Gallows, Banyan Bar + Refuge) serves up perfect, simple smash burgers ($12) with fried pickles on the side, Nashville hot chicken sandwiches (on challah, y’all, $15), wings brined in pickle juice and double-fried with your choice of sauce (six for $12), giant Greek salads ($13). There’s a weekly Wednesday wurst, where it’s sausage’s time to shine. The kitchen’s creativity is the limit: one week the Bubba Gump Po’boy (andouille with chilled Cajun shrimp, pickled green beans, confit garlic, and lemon aioli on a toasted French roll), another the Tequila Sunrise Dog (hot dog with chorizo salsa, roasted potatoes, cheese whiz, pickled onion, and more). You can top your dish with an egg, fried chicken, crab Rangoon sauce, all kinds of cheese. You can put caviar on anything.
If there’s a meal that encapsulates the Quiet Few’s gestalt, it is the Big Papi ($55): two beer-braised jumbo Pearl hot dogs on buttered brioche, an ounce of caviar from East Boston Oysters, chips and French onion dip, and a pitcher of light beer from Night Shift Brewing. Is that not perfect? That is perfect.
On a recent visit, a friend and I roll in for wings, burgers, potato chips with onion dip and caviar, crisp sauteed green beans with romesco sauce, almonds, mint, parsley, feta, and lemon. I drink an Old Fashioned made with the Quiet Few’s Old Forester single barrel bourbon. She drinks a fruity, frosty concoction called the Keanu Freeze, which comes with a paper umbrella. We both move on to frozen espresso martinis.
The two of us have eaten together at plenty of fancy restaurants, but I can’t say they’ve made us any happier than the Quiet Few on this low-key Monday night.
It is a perfect neighborhood bar. Unfortunately, it’s not my neighborhood. But it is hers. When Weinstein asks later by phone how I came to frequent this consummate local, I tell him I have a friend who lives nearby.
“Oh yeah?,” he says. “What’s her name?”
The Quiet Few, 331 Sumner St., East Boston, 617-561-1061, www.thequietfew.com