Danyelle Edwards has been visiting New York City annually for the past five years but says she could never get a table at the Tokyo Listening Room, a tiny restaurant in Greenwich Village. This year, the North Carolina lawyer got lucky with a Wednesday seating at 6 p.m. She enjoyed drinks with a friend, an $85 prix fixe menu and — here’s the special part — a DJ spinning records on a luxurious sound system. Edwards’ request: Patsy Cline’s "I Fall to Pieces."
"You know when you feel the music and it's, like, going down your nervous system?" Edwards, 48, says. "If it's everybody in the room, it’s more of a collective experience."
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Welcome to a little-known niche in New York City nightlife: vinyl bars. They’ve been popping up over the past several years as the vinyl album — nearly extinct in 1993 with total sales of $10.6 million, according to the Recording Industry Association of America — continues its remarkable comeback. (Sales climbed to $1.4 billion in 2024.) Vinyl bars offer a combination of adult beverages, sometimes food and always a handpicked playlist spinning on audio equipment from top-notch brands like Sonus faber and McIntosh.
Vinyl bars have their roots in Japan, where they were called "jazz kissa" and proliferated during the 1930s. Japan banned American jazz during World War II but re-embraced it in peacetime, when stereo and high-fidelity sound were becoming popular. Jazz kissa soon appealed to a new breed of listener: the audiophile. Tokyo’s much-revered bar JBS — short for Jazz Blues Soul — served as inspiration for Ariel Arce, who opened Tokyo Record Bar in 2017.
"We expect to see vinyl now just as decor," Arce, 37, says. "But at the time, you went to see somebody spin at a club, and that was kind of it."
Today there are at least a dozen vinyl bars in New York City, but we picked three to visit. Here’s what to expect if you go.
Tokyo Record Bar & Tokyo Listening Room
127 MacDougal St., Manhattan
Arce’s restaurant is a one-block walk from the bustling West 4th Street subway hub in Greenwich Village. It’s easy to miss, so look for a circular sign with an image of a friendly fox. Once in the building, open a plain-looking door and you’ll see a mini-lounge with a cozy footprint of just 500 square feet, according to Arce.
This space is the Tokyo Record Bar, which has seating at small tables or a compact bar. The mood is casual (though reservations are recommended), with cocktails, snacks and appetizers a la carte. My companion ordered a Creatures from the Sea (a mellow blend of mescal, sherry, vermouth and star fruit, $20) and we split orders of the spicy teriyaki wings ($23) and blistered shishito peppers ($18). Our soundtrack turned out to be mostly Amy Winehouse and No Doubt — not exactly rare grooves, but bartenders here often pick the albums before the DJs arrive later in the evening, according to beverage director Yana Volfson.
For the full vinyl-and-dining experience, book a table downstairs in the even smaller Tokyo Listening Room (350 square feet) where guests sit shoulder-to-shoulder and the food arrives izakaya-style — small plates chosen by the chef. When we visited, the menu included yellowtail with jalapeño sorbet and Montauk oysters with Meyer lemon granita. You help choose the playlist by writing your song selection on the paper that held your chopsticks; we overheard ABBA’s "Dancing Queen" and David Bowie’s "Golden Years."
In Tokyo, Volfson explains, izakaya meals rarely fill you up, so folks often grab a slice of pizza on their way home. The Tokyo Listening Room upholds that tradition: After dinner, you’ll be sent off with your very own slice to go.
Customers enjoy a seven course tasting menu at the Tokyo Record Bar. Credit: Linda Rosier
"I realized that there was kind of a need for experiential dining and community-building," says Arce, a former theater kid and eclectic music fan whose tastes run from classic rock to zydeco. She claims not to mind the boom in vinyl-bar competition: "Everybody's doing something a little bit differently. I think it's all welcome."
More info tokyorecordbar.com
Bierwax
556 Vanderbilt Ave., Brooklyn
Shelves filled with vinyl records and a list of beers at BierWax in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. Credit: Kyle Gonzales
This funky bar in the booming Prospect Heights neighborhood is named for owner Chris Maestro’s two passions: craft beer and vinyl.
Maestro, 48, of Oceanside, spent seven years as a New York City schoolteacher, then worked at education-related nonprofits while DJing for fun. "A friend of mine showed me a picture of Jazz Blues and Soul — JBS — in Japan," Maestro recalls. "I was like: Wait a second, this is exactly what I’ve been envisioning in my head." Maestro opened BierWax in 2017, just a few months after the Tokyo Record Bar, he says.
With its narrow layout, dark paneling, rows of vinyl behind the bar and a back wall covered with pictures of Maestro posing alongside various hip-hop luminaries, BierWax feels like a hipper version of an old-time watering hole. The Wednesday evening I stopped by, the DJ spun a mix of reggae, ska and dub.
A look inside BierWax in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. Credit: Kyle Gonzales
To test Maestro’s beer selection, I brought along an aficionado — and even he was unfamiliar with some of the names on the menu. We tried the Transmitter B6 American Porter (a pleasantly toasty local brew) and Schilling’s unusual Schneeberg lager, made in a rare "historical" style, according to the brewer’s website.
Cans of beer and drafts both run in the $8 to $11 range. One nice touch: There are no pint glasses, so you aren’t committed to drinking too much of one draft. The glass sizes are 12 ounce, 8 ounce, and even a petite 4 ounce — perfect for taking a gamble on an unknown brand.
More info 347-533-8449, bierwaxnyc.com
Honeycomb
74 5th Ave., Brooklyn
Honeycomb Hi-Fi Audio Lounge in Brooklyn. Credit: Honeycomb
Located on the edge of the Park Slope neighborhood, Honeycomb is hidden behind a metal-and-glass door on a busy stretch of retail storefronts. Inside, it’s a little cocoon with golden-hued lighting, quaint lamps atop the bar and two turntables playing through a glowing-green McIntosh amplifier.
This was the most vinyl-forward of the three spots I tried, and it introduced me to two new experiences. One was a house cocktail called a Rolls Royce (gin-based, plus two vermouths and benedictine, $16) and the other was Gábor Szabó, a Hungarian jazz guitarist whose 1971 album "High Contrast" (featuring several Bobby Womack tunes) has since become a favorite in my house.
Also enjoying the vibe was Benji Kandel, 25, a restaurant worker from Brooklyn who says the Honeycomb helps him focus on music in a way that streaming doesn’t. "If you put on an album to listen, you really enshrine the album as a format," he explains between sips of a Martian Landscape, a Japanese whiskey-based cocktail with a red wine float ($18). Kandel admits, however, that when he hears a song he likes, he does what most millennials would do.
"I’ve definitely Shazam-ed a bunch of stuff here, and added it to my playlist," he says.
More info honeycombk.com
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