Employees Only

Reading the room before the recipe

The first read happens before the first pour: Dushan Zaric, Co-Founder of Employees Only in West Village, Manhattan, built his bar craft from the door inward. His early post was as a bouncer in Brighton Beach from 1996, a job that trained the eye to catch pressure before it became a problem. That discipline still suits Employees Only, where the room asks for speed, ease, control, and enough warmth to keep a narrow space moving without making it feel managed.

Zaric came to New York hospitality after Belgrade and the University of Belgrade, then moved through ownership and drinks leadership rather than a single bench apprenticeship. He was co-owner of The 86 Company until 2016, and since 2017 has worked as co-owner of Employees Only and drinks mastermind of Hotel Figueroa. At the original New York bar, opened in 2004, his role sits in the live exchange between method and guest. “I don't believe the mastery of cocktailing is in just following recipes, which, for me, are always guidelines anyway.” That is not a dismissal of structure. It is the working premise of a bar where a spec matters, then the bartender has to read the person in front of them.

Cocktails built for speed and judgment

Employees Only runs as a cocktail-led restaurant, not a bar with food tacked on after the fact. The drinks program has been cited for well-made, speedy cocktails, the kind of execution that asks for practiced hands rather than theatrical delay. The bar has carried a place in The World’s 50 Best Bars for ten consecutive years, with No. 95 in The World’s 50 Best Bars 2025 and No. 18 in North America’s 50 Best Bars 2025. Its New York room was also named World’s Best Cocktail Bar at Tales of the Cocktail in 2011.

The method is high-volume without surrendering judgment. A bartender can work from a recipe, but Zaric’s own account keeps the recipe in its proper place, as a guideline under pressure from the guest, the station, and the room. Alongside that bar discipline, the kitchen gives the night weight: steak tartare, spicy sausage cavatelli, crab cakes, meatballs, bacon wrapped lamb chops, ricotta gnocchi, and bone marrow. The menu is à la carte, built for tables, the counter, and late eating, with enough structure to turn a drink into a full stop rather than a passing order.

A narrow room with a long memory

The address is 510 Hudson Street, the New York original of Employees Only and the anchor for later outposts. Inside, the room carries the proportions of a club car: dim light, Art Deco lines, a bar-centric crowd, and a counter close enough to make service visible. The pass is not hidden from the mood of the room. Plates move through a space already shaped by shakers, glassware, and the low churn of late-night conversation.

That texture matters because Employees Only has always depended on more than a concealed entrance. The place holds together when the bar and kitchen keep pace with one another, when the person at the station knows whether the next guest wants to talk drinks or simply join the room. Zaric has described bartending as a human experience, and at 510 Hudson Street that idea lands in the smallest practical gestures: a read, a pour, a plate of bone marrow reaching the counter.