On Ice
Frozen Asset
Sipping chilled drinks at NYC’s rooftop Igloo Bar—on the coldest night of the year.
On the coldest, windiest night of the year, I went to a rooftop in the Flatiron District to check out the Igloo Bar. The whole place is one big photo-op, with spectacular views —hello Empire State Building in all its lit-up glory!— a set of swings in a bower, strings of festive lights everywhere, illuminated snowflakes, and of course, as the name suggests, domed plastic igloos.
The Igloo Bar website strongly suggests reservations, but I imagined the only people there other than myself on such a brutal evening would be Swiss mountaineers, Sherpas, and former prisoners from the Gulag. “We saw it on TikTok,” said a young French woman about her group, all of them wrapped in the fluffy red robes available to visitors. “Someone from Virgin Atlantic recommended it,” said a British couple, enjoying cocktails at an outdoor table away from the space heaters available in the igloos. “We’re only here for four days; have to make the most of it! You can’t enjoy the view as well from inside the plastic.”
And it’s not just a bar; there’s surprisingly excellent food available and, depending on how elaborate you’d like to imagine your evening, you can book a prix fixe dinner for $49 a person, or you could rent a private igloo for 25 guests for $500 plus a $2,000 minimum for food and drinks.
Or you can do what I did, which is just show up and have the run of the place. A Polish man I knew advised me to drink lots of vodka in these circumstances: “It won’t keep you warm, but you’ll stop caring about being cold,” so I opted for vodka in my hot apple cider.
There are, incredibly enough, a wide variety of frozen cocktails available, along with the usual Espresso martinis and an Empire Kamikaze shot with vodka, triple sec, and lime juice. As I settled myself near a fire pit, the hot apple cider didn’t stay hot enough to keep me warm, and there wasn’t enough vodka to make me stop caring.
I wondered why there weren’t any whisky drinks on the menu. There could be one called The MacReady, after Kurt Russell’s character in the legendary horror movie The Thing, set in Antarctica, as he’s constantly fortifying himself with J&B Scotch. Or a dram of Haig & Haig Dimple Scotch, which was served to Rock Hudson’s character in the espionage thriller, Ice Station Zebra, which was the name of the British weather station at the North Pole. (Which would be an even better name for the bar, and a perfect name for a cocktail.) The menu offerings range from burgers and fish & chips to miso glazed salmon and steak frites. (Yes, you can examine them all at length on TikTok.)
The bar also functions as a kind of dating app, with constant events designed for face-to-face encounters. There’s Bachata Wednesdays, after the music and dance from the Dominican Republic, with a complimentary dance class at 9:00 p.m.; once a month Bollywood Parties; and a K-Pop Club Night, where the action spills downstairs. There’s also a Sunday Rooftop Brunch starting at 2:00 p.m., with a DJ at 6:00 p.m. It might be the ideal way to see the sunset on March 9th, the day after Daylight Savings Time, when the sun sets at the suddenly late hour of 7:00 p.m.
The igloos are up and available through April. Igloo Bar is located at 230 Fifth Rooftop, 1150 Broadway, NY 10001.
Hero photo of Lynn Snowden Picket at Igloo Bar by Lynn Snowden Picket
