Getting Baptized at Mel's Burger Bar

Three law students walk into a bar...

Mel's Burger Bar
2850 Broadway
Morningside Heights
Open since: 2010
Price: $$
What to order: The dirty hipster burger (if it's still on the menu)
Jeff's Rating: 7.3/10

A neighborhood watering hole with more than a few options to choose from

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Nobody would call Morningside Heights the hottest area of town, but for those who find themselves in the neighborhood (say, because they happen to go to law school down the street), there are a few classic options for someone who wants to relax after a long day (say, because they spent that day learning about contracts and torts at the law school down the street).

There’s 1020, the old faithful, known only by its street address, where undergraduates with vape pens hang out on the back couches or play billiards with locals. Bartenders serve cheap beer from draught lines with a slightly funky taste – you know the type.

Lions Head is another dive-y option, a bit farther down Amsterdam Avenue, where I walked in one afternoon and had the bartender ask me if I was ready to have a quick “eye opener” between classes.  Not this time, thank you.

Arts & Crafts sits closer to campus, and has the unique superlative of being the only bar that acts as an art gallery and a beer parlor at the same time (if I recall correctly, a bartender there once admitted the concept was “kind of dumb”).

For those who want TVs, and lots of them, look no further than Amity Hall, a sports bar tailormade for the New York college campus (it’s not a coincidence that there’s also one in Greenwich Village).

And on Broadway, between 110th and 111th streets, lies Mel’s Burger Bar, a no-frills establishment churning out wings, beer, and their namesake burgers all day and night with a loyalty club unlike any other in the city.

Mel’s gets packed with the younger crowd on weekends, but luckily it’s a Wednesday afternoon when I first walk in with my friends Andy and Jacob to grab a beer after class. It’s late-summer of 2017, and I’ve just moved to New York. The streets are packed with new students not yet burdened with the thoughts of homework and finals. That quintessential New York smell is in the air, the one you forget about during the winter but that can’t help but remind you of where you are once the weather warms up. The sun outside reflects off the sidewalk in a white flash, but inside Mel’s the ambient light quickly dims to be replaced by dark wood and the faint glow of incandescent bulbs.

A man who looks like Thor says hi to us from behind the bar as we walk in. “Grab a seat anywhere you’d like.” It’s quiet this time of day, and we sit at a four top right at the corner of the L-shaped room. We take a look at the menu, and they have what seems like a million beers to choose from. I settle on the “Flying Dog Numero Uno,” which the waitress tells me is like a Corona.

“Are you guys in the Brew Crew?” We stare at her, looks of confusion evident on our faces, before Andy finally asks what the Brew Crew is and how we get in. A simple question, but one that kicks off an 18-month long odyssey to drink every beer in the restaurant.

The rules of Brew Crew are quite simple:

1.       There are 50 beers on the menu. Drink them all.

2.       As you drink them, you can keep track of your progress via an app on your phone.

3.       After you reach beer number 50, you get to drink from larger glasses (equivalent to about a beer and half) for life.

“But first you have to get baptized,” notes Thor from behind the bar. That’s strange - I didn’t think Norse gods adhered to the tenets of Christianity.

“What does it mean to be baptized?” Jacob asks a great question, extremely topical, one that was on my mind as well.

“It’s how we initiate new members into the Brew Crew – you go behind the bar and you shotgun a beer while they pour a pitcher over your head.” Welcome to New York. Mel’s is technically on Broadway, so it makes sense that they’d go with something a bit theatrical. The three of us look at each other pensively. “Let’s get started then.”

Fast forward, one month later and we’re making progress slowly but surely. It’s autumn now, dinnertime, and I’m chowing down on the “dirty hipster,” a menagerie of a burger complete with spinach dip, jack cheese, fried onion rings, and a potato bun.  Some sort of stout sits half-consumed on the table next to me as I chat with Andy and Jacob about the still-adolescent semester.

Another couple of months, beer number 20-something. The calendar turns to 2018 but Mel’s hasn’t changed a bit. Andy, Jacob, and I have a semester under our belts now – we’re veterans of the law school game and it’s been a while since the three of us got dinner together. It’s a Monday night, and we discover that Mel’s has a special discount on chicken wings. Buffalo or barbecue, both solid. I sip an amber-colored ale to wash them down.

We return weekly, for a time, to chow down on our Monday wings. We make progress towards our final goal. A raspberry lager one week, a double-hopped IPA the next. Some of these are a struggle to get through, but we put our heads down and persevere. I consume something called “left hand milk stout” and it feels like it curdles in my stomach before the bottle even leaves my left hand... The beers range from the arcane to the pedestrian – I’m intrigued by the “Great South Bay Blood Orange Pale Ale,” amused by the “Miller Lite.”

Life gets in the way. It takes another whole year to get to the end. Something called a “stone ripper” in April. A pineapple cider in August. More wings. More burgers. More law school memories.

Fast forward again. It’s January of 2019, the second semester of our 2L year, when we finally walk into Mel’s one night with a small group of supporters for our baptism. The staff scrutinize our phones, checking to make sure every beer on the list has been checked off. The wind whips up leaves into swirling vortexes on the sidewalk outside as winter darkness seeps into the bar from the street, only to be washed out by the bright incandescent bulbs. It’s crowded this evening. People pack up to the bar to get their orders in. Almost all of the tables in the restaurant are occupied by some of Columbia’s finest.

The three of us are ushered behind the bar for our ceremony. Thor is working tonight, and he takes three cans of beer and pokes holes in the bottom with his keys before he hands them to us. “Are you ready?” After close to a year and a half of work, I suppose I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. One of the bartenders announces the situation to the crowd and begins ringing a loud metal bell by a pull string. We raise the cans to our mouths and pull the tabs.

My shock response kicks in before I have a chance to register what’s going on. I feel like I’ve jumped into a cold shower as wet, sticky, frothy beer hits the top of my head and begins to soak my hair down to the scalp. The hoppy liquid winds its way down the center of my back as I tilt my head to finish my can. My shirt is soaked, and immediately adheres to my body. It’s in my eyes – so much for my theory that my glasses would act as a windshield. I lean forward as beer begins to collect on the tip of my nose and drip onto the floor. I turn to my left and see my friends shaking out their hair. I stifle a shiver.

Our onlookers celebrate, and just like that we’re in the Brew Crew. A server brings out three red t-shirts for us with the Mel’s logo emblazoned across the back. We emerge from the bar victorious, slowly walking out into the cold. It must be below 30 degrees outside, and I can’t figure out if it’s better or worse for my beer-soaked clothing to just freeze solid onto my body. At least I only live a few blocks away.

Fast forward one more time. It’s 2022. Mel’s survived the Covid pandemic, and so did we. Andy, Jacob, and I are back in Morningside Heights, and we’re ready to exercise our Brew Crew membership. We talk about all the changes that have happened in our lives since that night three years ago as we sip beer from extra large glasses, but on the second round, we forget to let them know about our status and are relegated back to the standard size.

We don’t mind. It was never about the beer.