Nightlife in Brooklyn

The culinary technicians at Johnny Malloy's Sports Pub dish out a menu of palate-pleasing game-day specialties. Warm up injury-prone teeth with a quintet of wings ($4.25) in one of 15 flavors, from mild-mannered Texas sweet to saucy hot garlic buffalo. Carnivorous canines can chomp at the Malloy classic, a half-pound patty cloaked in melted swiss and sautéed mushrooms ($7.99) or a succulent half slab of ribs ($11.99). The mexican pizza, a dough disk painted in taco sauce, two cheeses, tortilla chips, and a multitude of south-of-the-border fixings ($12.99+), transports diners to the guacamole-paved streets of Cancun. A slice of creamy cheesecake ($3.99) sweetens the dessert menu.

As a typeface, the Helvetica font communicates with no flourishes; it's a bare-bones style where what you see is what you get. Striving for the same simplicity, Helvetica Juice Bar & Cafe, which is run by the same owner as the Latin-themed Burroco Grill, offers a culinary experience that comes off as similarly natural and elegant. Inside, rustic raw-wood tables, art installations, and exposed-brick walls welcome guests as they approach a chalkboard holding the café’s simple menu of sweets and savories, gourmet tacos, crepes, sandwiches, and Latin American–inspired dishes.

As cooks prepare guests’ orders, they work only with ripe fruits, fresh meats, and other ingredients that have never been canned, frozen, or preserved. Topping the list of sustenance is a selection of sweet crepes made with Nutella and ice cream, or studded with fruit and cookies. Savory options may include Latin-inspired eats, such as barbacoa tacos. The café’s signature smoothies boast bananas and mangos, and juice blends incorporate fruits from around the world, such as high-fiber curuba, vitamin-rich lulo, and Caribbean fruits such as maracuya, lulo, and guanabana, A BYOB establishment, customers often bring liquor to add to the juice drinks, turning them into specialty cocktails. As further show of the café’s conscientious offerings, Helvetica’s iced and hot coffee drinks are squeezed from direct-trade beans and served in biodegradable cups.

Few bars can boast a brunch menu as notable as their pours. But Around the Corner’s hot coconut cakes nabbed it a spot on Cleveland Magazine’s 30 Best Breakfast Dishes in 2012. Inspired by head chef Sonny Zarlis’s Indonesian upbringing, the light, crispy pancakes include coconut milk, a touch of Coco Lopez, and grated coconut on top—his mother’s recipe. But when morning fades to night and the sun becomes a mere puddle of butter in the sky, the eatery fills the brunch-shaped hole in customers’ bellies with a dinner menu of burgers, wings, and fajitas. Accompanied by local and craft beers, meals unfold amid live music and TV screens.

Rather than limit themselves to serving creative, Cleveland-inspired cuisine or to hosting late-night bowlers sipping from frothy pint glasses, the founders of 4th Street Bar & Grill – The Corner Alley decided to do both. Inside spacious, sleek environs, servers at the bowling alley’s 4th Street Bar & Grill dole out pierogis—dumplings stuffed with potato and smoked cheddar cheese—and oven-baked pizzas, such as the Alley Pie, topped with cheese and fresh basil. Local draft brews from Buckeye Brewing, Brew Kettle, and Hoppin’ Frog or one of more than 20 locally-inspired cocktails and martinis accompany meals and pin-pulverizing sessions at one of 16 lanes. Satellite-selected sounds pump through speakers, and patrons can control tunes from a special app on their phone or speak directly to Meatloaf through the jukebox.

Whether they’re there to bowl, eat, drink, or finally understand gravity, up to 600 people can gather inside the ample quarters. Groups of 4–45 revelers can populate the Mezzanine, a private party room hoisted atop an elevated platform and replete with several flat-screen TVs. Millionaire’s Row plays host to 100 guests, who can bowl on four private lanes, sip martinis at the Back Alley bar, or lay quietly atop the billiards table. And inside the 2,000-square-foot Spare Room, up to 90 friends can dine on a customizable menu as well as play billiards, air hockey, foosball, darts, and skeeball.