A bottle of red? A bottle of white? Maybe you often drank rosé those nights — back in the 1970s and ’80s — the heyday of Long Island's wine and cheese bars.
Less formal than restaurants and classier than singles bars, they sat in a romantic and economic sweet spot. "They were a nice, quiet place to go and just have conversations, a glass of wine or a pitcher of sangria, maybe play a board game," remembers retired IT professional Jaime Cruz, 67, of Hicksville. "You go to a bar now, it's not the same thing."
Wine and cheese bars — or wine and cheese cafés, as they called themselves then — offered a low-key and inexpensive sophistication, where a couple could converse over a cheese board with apple slices and maybe some pepperoni, and an unobtrusive singer provided a background of Carole King, James Taylor or Harry Chapin and the like.
Dina Abbazia at Tiffany's wine and cheese bar in the 1980s. Credit: Jed Dinger
"You were going someplace fancy and having a glass of wine and maybe a chocolate fondue, listening to acoustic guitar and chatting with your friends or your boyfriend," recalls Janice Costa, 60, of Bethpage, who runs the Canine Camp Getaway vacation company. During an era when the drinking age was 18, "You could feel a little more grown up than going to the movies or the mall or the skating rink or the bowling alley."
Today’s wine bars may have charcuterie boards, the upscale equivalent, but these places often are restaurants with a full bar — and the decor doesn’t harken back to the plush chairs, wax-dripped wine-bottle candles or vaguely Victorian atmosphere that seemed to take us to a more genteel time.
Here is a selection of long-gone wine and cheese bars that still loom large in vintage date night memories.
TIFFINANNY'S
The granddaddy of them all. Tiffinanny’s opened in 1964 in Valley Stream, advertising "continental service," in which food arrived on platters and guests helped themselves. Eschewing live music, the place was also an antiques store where "all the decor is for sale," according to one ad.
Rose Marie Mikolajczak, 75, formerly of Lawrence, recalls going on a date here in the early '70s. "We were used to bars, and this was not that," she says.
Janet Bleier, 69, now of Hollywood, Florida, says she and her future husband "used to frequent the place in the ’70s and ’80s." On Aug. 31, 1981, as the couple headed home to North Woodmere after dinner and a Broadway show, "We decided to stop at Tiffinanny’s for a late-night game of backgammon and a glass of wine. While there," she recalls, "he proposed and gave me a ring!" She and Bruce Bleier recently celebrated their 43rd anniversary.
Tiffinanny’s expanded, adding a supper club advertised as Tiffinanny’s 3: The Great American Recovery at the opposite end of the three-store building. It’s unclear how long it lasted, but the original closed in 1984.
That retail strip on Merrick Road has since housed many businesses, with the address today the site of a Metro by T-Mobile store.
BACK BARN
Ira Beeber saved this matchbox from Back Barn, a shuttered wine and cheese bar. Credit: Ira Beeber
Originating as an extension of their newly opened Cheese Emporium in Bethpage in 1973, Back Barn was the brainchild of Ron Castiglione and Ralph Fatturuse, two former Grumman electrical-design engineers who wanted to create a casual place for folk music.
Their hearts must not have been in cheese since Back Barn soon supplanted the emporium. Newsday in 1977 described it as "a no-frills, two-story place that attracts mostly college-aged persona in blue jeans." Beneath wooden beams the decor was old farm implements Castiglione had salvaged from Pennsylvania. The food included "fondue, fruit and cheese platters ... and, coming soon, crepes." By the following year, the owners had opened a second location, in Valley Stream.
Judy Tasch met her future husband, Michael, during a blind date at the Bethpage original in 1979. "I thought this guy was so cute!" recalls the retired marketing executive, 67, of East Meadow. "We drank and talked for hours."
Eventually both locations became full-service restaurants, as did a third outpost in Smithtown. All closed down in the mid-1980s. Watawa Sushi & Lounge now occupies the site of the original.
THE PAWNBROKER
The first of its two locations opened in mid-1971 in Baldwin, "run by the Garvin Brothers with the help of Joel Vigiano," according to the sole newspaper mention of those proprietors. The Farmingdale location was in place as of 1981. Both offered "select cheeses, quiches [and] fondue ... in a warm, relaxing Victorian atmosphere."
"The Pawnbroker was my favorite" wine and cheese bar, says Costa, who sometimes sang there at open-mic nights in the days before karaoke.
Both locations continued into the early ’80s. But by 1984, the Farmingdale locale was being advertised by its lonesome. It endured at least another three years. Its Main Street address has been absorbed by The Nutty Irishman bar and its affiliated event space, The James Room. The Baldwin address is now a boarded-up building.
TIFFANY
Frank LoFaro and a business partner opened the first of the two Tiffany wine and cheese bars around 1978, on the site of a former post office in the shopping center Commack Corners. The second debuted May 18, 1979, in an East Meadow space that had once housed the nightspot Club Coral.
Jed Dinger, 62, formerly of Smithtown and now of Kensington, Maryland, describes the Commack original as the quintessential such spot, with "floral fabrics, tablecloths and these Tiffany lights, which were popular at that time. The place was lit very dimly, and they had lots of small tables, two-tops where couples could sit."
Massapequa’s Maureen Berge Dunn, 68, a retired nurse, sang and played guitar for about a year at such venues as The Wine Barrel in Babylon, The Toad in the Hole in Wantagh and the Commack Tiffany. There, "You got $25 for four hours," she recalls.
The East Meadow location petered out in the mid-1980s.
FEARNS HARNESS SHOP
In an 1880 building that once housed actual harness shops — first John F. Remsen Harness Shop & Saddlery and later that of one George Fearn, who eschewed an apostrophe on his sign — this was one of the earliest wine and cheese bars on Long Island. Founded in 1971, it was part of a whole Roslyn Village entertainment scene that also included the original My Father’s Place and the rock bar US Blues, fueled by what news articles of the time called an influx of revitalizing "counterculturists" — what we might call hipster gentrification today.
Eddie Long and other co-owners were more serious about music than at most wine and cheese bars. The original 70-seat, calicoed tack room was eventually expanded, and in additional to offering the usual fare, Fearns also served as a music venue featuring classical-guitar concerts and workshops on a regular basis. Local acts would perform original material. And on Nov. 11, 1979, the legendary blues duo Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee performed two shows.
In September 1981 the place was rebranded as Fearn’s Café. It closed sometime the following year. It later became the Mexican restaurant Poco Loco, until a fire destroyed the building in 2014. Today the remains are, sadly, a boarded-over relic.
