Irish-owned “best bar in the world” in NYC has reopened after fire

Beloved Manhattan bar The Dead Rabbit is back in action after a "long and frightening" 18 days.

Owners of The Dead Rabbit Grocery and Grog breathed a sigh of relief this week as they flung back open the doors to their popular watering hole.

WE ARE OPEN!

A post shared by Jack McGarry (@jackmcgarry1) on Jul 19, 2018 at 8:07am PDT

Irishmen Jack McGarry and Sean Muldoon confirmed that the downtown bar is back in business after intense fire damage ravaged the building three weeks ago.

The five-year-old bar made headlines around the globe when it was voted the most popular bar in the world in 2016.

The doors are open. The Dead Rabbit is back in business.

It’s been a long 18 days. It was a sad and frightening time for us all at first. Then we got it together and we dug in. And now we’ve got our bar back. So you do too.

Now, what’ll you have? pic.twitter.com/qFSlH5BFMX

— The Dead Rabbit NYC (@DeadRabbitNYC) July 19, 2018

Read More: NYC Irish bar closed 'indefinitely' due to fire

On July 1st, Firefighters in three fire engines responded to the bar located at 30 Water Street in the Financial District after receiving a report of a fire in the bar’s kitchen ventilation system.

While luckily nobody was hurt in the incident, the bar itself received "considerable fire and water damage". 

This is one happy crew. Today’s the day we finish all the work and the last of the clean-up with the amazing team we’ve had of electricians, painters, plumbers, carpenters and window cleaners. All the staff are here – the porters, servers, bartenders, kitchen staff and hosts and of course, Steve the Hero, pictured at the front there beside Jack. - World, we’re ready for you. Are you ready for us? - The Dead Rabbit re-opens tomorrow at 11am. Sharp. - Let the mayhem begin.

A post shared by Jack McGarry (@jackmcgarry1) on Jul 18, 2018 at 10:25am PDT

In the wake of the misfortune, it seems that all staff, from the porters and servers to bartenders and management, banded together to restore the bar to its former glory.

The Dead Rabbit, which is housed in a four-floor brick building near Wall Street is the brainchild of friends and Belfast natives, Muldoon and McGarry.

Its ethos is a tribute to the Irish who settled in New York in the 1800s, and it is named after a gang from Five Points.

“The idea was to bring Irish pub culture together with high-end cocktail culture in a way that made sense. I had to bring together an Irish idea with a cocktail idea, so I thought about New York in the 1840s and 50s,” Muldoon previously told IrishCentral.

“I knew a million Irish immigrants had arrived in New York from famine-torn Ireland in the between 1845-1851, and I knew that Jerry Thomas wrote the first ever published cocktail guide in New York in 1862. So I knew from the outset that something was happening here in that time period that brought both traditions together.

Read More: A whole new way to experience the world's best bar, The Dead Rabbit

Read More: New York Irish cocktail bar named best in the world