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[title]Scarlet, a new bar on the Upper West Side, is not a speakeasy. Not because nothing is—Prohibition having ended 90 years ago and alcohol being legal—but because its proprietors, Victoria and Michael Imperioli, come by the aesthetic influence without playing into the genre’s more theme-y qualities.
Sure, the word’s been bandied about but there aren’t any pseudo facades, theme park fixtures, or goofy secret codes that everybody knows. It’s intended, instead, to evoke the style of the time, rather than its reimagined photo moments alone.
The set and interior designer Victoria Imperioli’s past projects include period-appropriate renovations to the historic Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles, restoring some of its Art Deco details, and, here at home, work on the Imperiolis’ Manhattan apartment of a similar vintage. Restaurateur and family friend Jeremy Wladis had Imperioli’s portfolio in mind when he took over the space adjacent to Fred’s, the decades-old casual restaurant that Wladis has owned since 2022.
“I’m very inspired by the 1920s,” Victoria Imperioli says on a recent weekday before Scarlet’s 5pm opening. Staffers say that lines have formed outside on and off since its December 5 debut—the anniversary of when the Twenty-first Amendment passed in 1933 after 13 years of the outlaw boozing that still influences drinking culture at trap door spots and subtler destinations near and far today. “New York is about the 1920s. We’re surrounded by that period,” she says.
Married since 1996, Victoria and Michael Imperioli, the actor known for The White Lotus, The Sopranos, Goodfellas, and, perhaps to a lesser degree, Chopped Tournament of Stars, also have a shared hospitality background, having operated Ciel Rouge, Scarlet’s not dissimilar downtown antecedent in the aughts.
The newcomer hits some of those Deco notes that ring out from here clear to the Chrysler Building and echo throughout town: classic lines, high shine and a sleek, throwback logo among them. Scarlet is also richly appointed in lush textiles, awash in blush hues and cast in that timeless quality: flattering light. The little sweetheart—it only seats about 40 including an even smaller area that can be cordoned off by curtains—successfully achieves the elements plenty of places striving toward this ilk aim for, replete with classic and novel cocktails and a discrete side door to Fred’s, where Scarlet’s own staff shares kitchen space for the latter’s dedicated menu.
What we in NYC, in 2023, think of as a so-called speakeasy shares scarce bones with what the real deal would have been between 1920 and 1933, details Michael Imperioli had a personal look at during Scarlet’s construction. While filming an episode of the PBS program Finding Your Roots, he learned about a speakeasy—a real one!—that his great-great-grandfather operated in the Bronx near Mount Vernon after emigrating from Naples in the years leading up to the Eighteenth Amendment.
“And then: Prohibition hit,” Imperioli says. ”He started making booze and selling it at the place. I mean, I’m sure it didn’t look like this. He probably wasn’t making, you know, incredibly crafted cocktails; he might have been serving one alcohol. I think what they did was, they made a neutral spirit and flavored it with different things. So, ‘speakeasy’ probably had a really wide latitude.”
Imperioli says that “speakeasy” has become synonymous with a certain “transportive vibe, meticulous attention to the craft of making cocktails, and the service of it.” The couple didn’t feel it was necessary to do the fake entrance and “the gimmick of that.”
“I think those things are kind of fun, but maintaining that over a long period of time could get kind of annoying, once everybody knows about it,” he says.
“This is also going to be a neighborhood place,” Imperioli adds, identifying a different road to longevity. “A lot of people in the neighborhood are really excited about it, and I could tell that they’re gonna make it their regular haunt. We want it to be that as well. It shouldn’t feel intimidating, and it shouldn’t feel off-putting. It should be welcoming, even though it’s special.”
It shouldn’t feel intimidating, and it shouldn’t feel off-putting. It should be welcoming, even though it’s special.
One way the team is working to make the space feel a little extra special? Crowd control.
“Someone’s at the door, making sure there’s a place for people to sit,” Imperioli says. “It’s not a place where there’s going to be people three deep at the bar. The flow of patrons has to be really in harmony with how many it’ll seat comfortably. You also don’t want the elegance of service to be corrupted by having a really high volume, and too many people,” he says. “There’s been lines and waitlists and stuff like that. That’s not to make it exclusive, and it’s not to be snobbish at all, it’s just to really make sure that everyone has a good time while they’re in here, and we’re not just jamming and cramming them in like sardines,” he says.
Scene-setting will further unroll in January when Scarlet introduces entertainment. Imperioli, also a musician, and the bar’s “cultural curator” will populate its tiny stage, wedged into a corner between a banquette and the three-sided bar with live acts.
“The most obvious thing would be to have jazz music, right?” he poses. “Speakeasy, 20s-era. I’m interested to see how we can expand on that.”
And then, of course, there’s the drink list, which, in addition to those familiar and newly authored libations by Scarlet’s head bartender Matt Burkhardt, includes a more-studied-than-most lineup of non-alcoholic cocktails, beer and wine.
“People who don’t drink or don’t want to drink that night don’t just have to have soda water or something,” says Imperioli, who “rarely” imbibes. “They can participate in whatever that experience is to them, watching somebody make their cocktail and, be part of the same vibe, I think that’s really important, because a lot of people are choosing not to drink, or don’t drink all the time, and still want to go out and have a good time. So that was really conscious, to really make it interesting for people who don’t want to drink.”
“It’s very important for us that everyone can come in here,” Victoria Imperioli adds. “I just wanted a great place for people to come to enjoy and get away from the mundane from ordinary life, with emphasis on great cocktails, music and food.”
Scarlet is located at 468 Amsterdam Avenue. It is open Sunday from 5pm-11pm, Monday-Thursday from 5pm-midnight and Saturday from 5pm-2am.