June Baby brings Filipino cocktails to New York's East Village
Roxanne Diaz Bangalan, Darwin Pornel and Ben Rojo turn a former East Village bar into a Filipino-American cocktail room built on ube, calamansi and turon.
June Baby opened on 28 October in New York's East Village, pouring cocktails built on ube, calamansi and turon instead of the usual bar canon.
The 42-seat room sits at 197 Second Avenue, the former home of Black Emperor, a neighbourhood bar co-owner Ben Rojo once ran himself. Rojo, who also runs No Smoking in Los Angeles, opened June Baby with Roxanne Diaz Bangalan and Darwin Pornel. Bangalan has worked the floor at Faith & Flower, the NoMad Hotel and Union Square Cafe. Pornel most recently ran operations at Paradise Projects, the group behind Mister Paradise, Pretty Ricky's and Elvis.
June Baby's cocktails lean Filipino
Ube and calamansi do more work here than any back-bar bottle.
The opening list leans on ingredients rarely seen on an East Village cocktail menu. The Ube Colada swaps the usual coconut-and-pineapple base for ube, the purple yam grown across the Philippines. The Turon-Tado takes a daiquiri and folds in caramelised banana and jackfruit, a nod to the fried turon snack sold on Manila street corners. A Calamansi Hi-Ball pairs vodka and soda with the sharp, small citrus, with a non-alcoholic version running alongside it.
Food comes from consulting chefs Kevin Cardenas, Adrian Capellan and Lem Soriano: lumpiang Shanghai, salt-and-pepper kanto wings, and a burger the team calls a nod to In-N-Out, built around a secret sauce. Service runs Tuesday to Sunday, 4pm to midnight, with a late kitchen and off-menu additions after hours.
A name tied to Philippine independence
June Baby takes its name from 12 June, Philippine Independence Day, and the owners describe the project as a love letter to a third-culture upbringing rather than a straight transplant of Manila cooking. Pornel told local press earlier this year that the bar would lean on dishes like pork adobo and kilawin alongside cocktails carrying Filipino flavours.
That spring announcement sketched a bigger room: 17 tables, a ten-seat bar. The list that actually opened in October is leaner, built around the colada, the daiquiri riff and the hi-ball, with the kitchen filling out the rest of the menu.
June Baby arrives a few blocks from Schmuck, the East Village bar that landed at No. 11 on the World's 50 Best Bars this year, reinforcing the neighbourhood's run as one of the city's busiest for bar openings. It joins a wider wave of restaurants shaping what to eat in New York right now, as Filipino, Thai and Mexican kitchens push further into downtown Manhattan's bar scene.
No second site is on the table yet. For now, June Baby pours seven nights a week, with the late-night menu the only variable left for regulars to track.
