Passing the Bar: Trix

Not being a Williamsburg habitué, I wasn’t exactly sure where I was or what I was walking into on that dark and stormy night a few Saturdays ago on Bedford Avenue. I just knew I had to get out of the rain.

Sure, the neon sign above the door said "Trix" and there were enormous abstract paintings of strippers hung on the walls. And were the front windows really painted with the words "Go Go Girls"? But I was wet and cold, so I walked into the caressingly low lights of this unexpected refuge.

As it turns out, Trix is a new Brooklyn bar-restaurant with a posh Manhattan pedigree. The menu comes from chef Ian Pasquer, a veteran of Tribeca Grill, Le Paradou and L’Orange Bleue, and it features an eclectic mix of Mediterranean, North African, Indian, Thai, Swiss and Alsatian cuisine.

The cocktail list is designed by Dushan Zaric, owner of the Employees Only cocktail lounge in the West Village, known for its Gilded Age flair, bartenders with handlebar mustaches and alcoholic concoctions developed on principles observed by photographing frozen molecules.

Of course, I didn’t know all this as an earnest and friendly Trix bartender served me a Trix Cocktail ($10), a delicate swirl of muddled white and red grapes, BarSol Pisco brandy and lime juice shaken with chardonnay. Perhaps it was the gloomy weather, but I was in the mood for something light and festive, like sangria, and the Trix did the trick.

I knew I was on to something—and considering its prime location on Bedford Avenue at North Ninth Street, I’m confident that Trix won’t stay hidden for long.

On my second visit to Trix, the weather was mild, the windows were thrown open to let in the daylight, and somehow the nearly nude dancing girl décor wasn’t so off-putting. (Trix general manager Craig Hutson has told me that the go-go theme is a nod to the venue’s history from a few decades back, when it was a joint called Belinda’s Lounge where topless dancers shimmied nightly until 4 a.m.)

The bar itself is a gorgeously welcoming piece of sculpture, a vast sheet of opalescent alabaster lit up from below and surrounded by a hand-studded metallic bar rail built by Long Island City artist James Johnson, who also painted the go-go girls and crafted Trix’s wood floors and ironwork by hand. It’s an almost ridiculously Hefneresque bar that wants you to sit at it and drink.

And drink I did, with a friend who joined me for cocktails and appetizers. Her Firecracker Cocktail ($12) with St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram, homemade mescal, agave syrup and pineapple juice wasn’t spicy, as I had expected, but its fruitiness was followed by a busy aftertaste that trailed behind on a long fuse.

I had to try Zaric’s signature drink, the Billionaire Cocktail ($12), because why not? Yes, it had bourbon "shaken with Employees Only grenadine," according to the cocktail list, but I was there for the homemade absinthe bitters. Sadly, I was visited by no wormwood-worthy hallucinations, but it was lovely and surprisingly smooth.

All the drinking made us hungry, and as we were seated at the bar, we went for a couple of small plates. Since my first visit, Pasquer’s menu had already grown, but it still included icy blue mussels stuffed with almond escargot butter ($8) and accompanied by baguette points. I’m not usually a fan of mussels, which seem a bit desiccated by the time they reach the table, but these were fat juicy things drenched in hot garlicky butter—truly reminiscent of escargots.

Our bartender also urged us to try the tasty green beans fried in beer batter ($8)—again, something that wouldn’t be my first pick, but the absinthe must have made me feel bold, and our bartender was such a bright and confident guide that I would have followed her to the lost horizon. 

>>Trix 

145 Bedford Ave. (at N. 9th St.), Brooklyn, 

347-599-0702.