The Paddock Menu | Masood Shah According to the Chinese zodiac, it’s the year of the horse — and that’s abundantly clear in hospitality. In February, Derby Cup Coffee swung open its New York City doors with an unbuttoned approach to Kentucky Derby prep. April marked the grand reopening and rebranding of Eugene, Oregon’s 80-year-old bar and restaurant the Paddock, a former sports bar that has retained much of its tavern-like spirit (now accented with cheeky, minimalist horse drawings), but with a new menu of nostalgic dishes like eggs Rockefeller, fried oyster sandwiches, and smoked potato poutine. Set to open this August in Red Hook, Brooklyn, is Pony’s: a cocktail bar whose WIP exterior teases its ambiance with a poster of a galloping pony whose expression reads, I trot where I please. This is all the continuation of an ongoing wave of horse-themed bars, restaurants, and businesses. There was last summer’s highly anticipated opening of Il Cavallini, the Four Horsemen team’s also-equine-branded follow-up restaurant, in Brooklyn; in August, the vinyl wine bar Horse With No Name trotted into the East Village with mustard-hued walls and the kinds of rodeo clown paintings that I imagine Terry Allen would enjoy. (We must also mention the loss of some big horse energy with the shuttering of Horses in Los Angeles, although it went out with all the drama of a Western.) Why all the horsing around in hospitality? And what does this new wave of equine (yes, I am running out of ways…
