MixedThe New York Times Book Review\"Favorite bars are a matter of personal taste, and I confess that from Michaud’s depiction, however loving, I would not have naturally been drawn to Coogan’s ... Michaud, a novelist, has the perspective of both the insider and the outsider, having married into a Dominican family, and into the neighborhood. His interest is personal and it shows. Descriptions of history and boundary lines, community affairs and social unrest are given as much time as the highly granular accounts of the day-to-day demands of restaurant ownership, rent negotiations and employee relations ... There are many names in this book. Hundreds — and most don’t reappear. While this serves to show the breadth of the author’s research, it does less for the book’s depth. A note on sourcing makes it clear that a good deal of the material was gathered through interviews, often by phone during the pandemic. This may have been beyond the author’s control, but feels limiting ... From these few pages of more personal writing, one has the sense of an earnest, inquisitive and genial customer, if not someone who kept his internal stenographer on call at all hours of the night.\
