I was yearning for some bacon-wrapped dates from SIP, my favorite tiny Morningside heights café/bar/restaurant/jack of all trades. The dates are fat and juicy, stuffed with oozy cream cheese and parceled up in bacon. More importantly, they cover all the bases of a perfect bar snack: salty, sweet, fatty, creamy, crunchy. Bliss.

I had ventured uptown to get my fix, but I was out of luck. My waitress was apologetic but powerless to change the debacle. SIP was out of their awesome bacon dates. What was a bacon-needing girl to do but order the billionaire's bacon. Carmelized in brown sugar and sounding promising enough, it would simultaneously allow me to get my fix while also satisfying my sweet tooth. The bacon arrived flecked with parsley and sticky with sugar, a winning flavor combo, but clearly my disappointment was leftover from the absence of the real dish I craved. 'Billionaire's bacon' is no bacon wrapped dates.

SIP does a lot of things right. From 5-7 p.m. every day my beloved dates, along with an assortment of other tapas, turn up for free with your drinks; and on Mondays all the food is half price. The kitchen doesn't close until 4AM; the people are uncommonly friendly; the juice is fresh-squeezed, the cocktails intelligently-crafted; DJs work their magic and singer-songwriters croon the night away; the walls are full of funky art and the counters are a collage of pennies. I'm going to forgive their bacon failure and next time request my bacon extra-crisp. Or, better yet, just keep my fingers crossed that they don't run out of those luscious bacon-wrapped dates.

SIP

998 Amsterdam Ave # 2, New York NY 10025 (b/n 109th and 110th; map)
212-316-2747