One Man’s Dream, One Grateful Community

Sometimes a city, or neighborhood, doesn’t even know it needs something — until that thing emerges. (The High Line being the ultimate example.) The recently opened East Harlem Bottling Co. may qualify for that category. The gastropub on Lexington Avenue and 107th Street is the creation of Leo Lauer, who has lived in the area for 12 years, but never felt there was a place to hang with, and get to know, one’s neighbors.

Then again, he was busy running a theater company and producing stage projects. But always in the back of Lauer’s mind was a dream that had nothing to do with moving a play from Off- to on Broadway. Instead, he envisioned folks standing around a bar at all hours, sharing stories of their day. The Bottling Co. is barely six months old but has helped rejuvenate uptown Lexington Avenue. Though other restaurants have also been sprouting, this was the one mentioned in the real estate section of The New York Times in October. A star was born.

Since opening in August, the buzzy and bustling 65-seat eatery has earned grateful raves from the locals. And even from those who are not so local. People like Gloria, and her husband, known as “H,” of 41 years. They live on 74th Street and Third Avenue, and first went to the Bottling Co. because their friend was the bartender there. “We like the chef, the food, the owners, we just decided to keep coming,” Gloria said one afternoon, drinking a specially brewed cider, around 4 p.m. “It makes you want to see more of the neighborhood too.”

As Lauer now knows, opening a restaurant may be the only thing more difficult than opening a play. He started actively looking for a space about five years ago. He came close on one, but when that fell through, he soon after found himself going to early morning movies five days a week. He also had a health scare, after which he picked himself up and became even more determined. When he stepped into the abandoned space on the corner of 107th Street — replete with plywood floors and brick walls — he knew he had found his place. “I checked to make sure they had kitchen space and electrical and I said ‘this is it,’” he recalls.

It was as if the residents had been waiting, and were standing in line from day one. “The neighborhood has completely embraced us,” says Lauer. I found one of those embracers, a young woman named Monica, having a late afternoon snack with a friend. “I live on 111th and I didn’t have many options of places to unwind,” she said. “This place has not so much changed the neighborhood as added to it. I love the avocado toast on the weekend and even my little brother loves coming here.”

Another night, I sat at the bar next to a single father who does not have a TV in his nearby home, so he comes to the Bottling Co. to watch sporting events on one of the bar’s four screens. He sat for hours, as do others here. And while two a.m. may seem unusually late (or early) to close, night-shift workers, others getting off jobs and college students seem to like the midnight-to-two a.m. ambience. Only beer and wine are served, along with surprisingly ambitious bar food (including steak frites, flatbread, mac and cheese and hugely popular bloody marys during weekend brunch).

Leo Lauer does not miss his theatrical life — he still dabbles in it — but he’s found something that fulfills many of the same instincts. “My background is in producing,” he says, “blending all the pieces to put on a show and tell a story. For New Yorkers, sitting around a set table or at a bar is also a kind of theater. Basically, we are setting the scene for folks to get away from the news and form a community.”

Is this Leo Lauer’s second act? Intermission before the next one? “I found myself asking questions like, ‘what do I really want to do’”? he says. For now, the East Harlem Bottling Co. is the answer, and while he may not be enjoying standing ovations nightly, he is definitely feeling the love.