Le Bateau Ivre

One of the first rules of safe boating is to not boat under the influence. A few drinks after a day of kayaking is one thing. A few drinks just before or during kayaking is another thing and altogether dangerous. But what about when the boat itself is drunk?

To celebrate my 51st birthday my wife recently treated me to a French Wine Bar monikered Le Bateau Ivre, or “The Drunken Boat” located on Manhattan’s 51st Street (51 for the birthday! Get it?)(facad pictured right). The name is taken from a classic French Poem by Arthur Rimbaud. To round out the experience our wait staff was a native Frank complete with accent who tolerated my poor attempts to pronounce the little French I know.


Since we were already in a drunken boat and land locked rather than on the open water we began our culinary excursion by sharing the nine wine tasting tray (pictured left). $35 will enable you to choose and taste nine French wines in 3oz glasses. Since we like red wine we chose nine red wines to taste and then ordered two full glasses of the one we liked most. Being in a French Wine Bar we began the non-wine portion of our meal with French onion soup. For our main course we ordered and shared two different tartines with mesclun salads. To cap of the French experience we concluded our voyage by splitting a delicious crème brulee.

All in all it was a delicious evening and we did not even become sea sick.