It’s the bar that AI built.
When the internationally renowned mixologists concocting New York City’s most anticipated bar, Schmuck, were run dry by their contractors, they opted for an unorthodox approach: They went from craft cocktail masters to craftsmen and built the East Village watering hole themselves — with the help of ChatGPT.
Moe Aljaff, 34, and Juliette Larrouy, 30, set aside their shakers, strainers, bar spoons and glassware, picked up their toolboxes — and set off sawing wood to build elevated seating sections, drilling the ceiling in place, installing tiling and tinkering with water filtration systems.
“In order for us to try to fulfill the vision and really make it the place that we wanted to make it, we’re like, ‘OK, screw it. We’ll do this ourselves and we’ll just try to get it done,’ ” Aljaff said, looking back at the moment the team decided to roll up their sleeves and take on the DIY project which cost more — both money and muscle — than they typically expend behind the bar.
In a sign of their dedication, Aljaff even went into 2025 with just $10 and change in his checking account.
The duo was the talk of the town last summer after hosting a packed pop-up in Midtown and a who’s-who cocktail party at Overstory in the Financial District, all to stir up excitement for their new bar opening in August at 97 First Ave.
Anticipation fizzled when they failed to open their doors this past summer.
However, Aljaff and Larrouy haven’t let it kill their buzz, or the public’s — even going so far as documenting the intense process on social media to keep interest bubbling.
“We’ve been involved in everything, and it’s scary and it’s a lot,” Aljaff admitted to The Post. “But the cool thing about when you design it yourself and conceptualize it and then make it into a physical thing is when it’s full of people and they’re enjoying it. It’s like making an amazing cocktail times a million.”
Aljaff earned international recognition in 2016 as a runner-up for the Bacardi Legacy Global cocktail competition and again when his Barcelona bar Two Schmucks landed at No. 7 on the World’s 50 Best Bars list in 2022.
But he eventually lost control of Two Schmucks and two neighboring bars following clashes with partners. Most of his Barcelona team walked out with him, including Larrouy, a former sous chef for a Michelin-starred chef he recruited to work the bar.
Aljaff wound up homeless and couch-hopping, and that was when he plotted to take on the American bar scene — with Larrouy coming on as an equal partner in the new venture.
After Aljaff got his O-1 Visa approval for “extraordinary abilities” — a nod to his mixology and hospitality skills — he and Larrouy said they would be opening their newest concoction, Schmuck, on the corner of Sixth Street and First Avenue, replacing the now-shuttered Spicewalla Masala and Mancora Restaurant & Bar.
As news spread, it quickly became one of the most anticipated bar openings of the year.
However, as their August opening date neared and issues with their general contractor ran through their budget and timeline, the team realized they would have to postpone the opening and switch from mixing cocktails to making ceilings.
“It could have been done in a different way, maybe a more stable or stronger way, but we were, like, OK, it’s not going to fit the budget [or timeline] unless we build it ourselves,” he said.
Aljaff and Larrouy embraced the management and problem-solving skills they typically used to run a bar and stepped in as their own general contractors, taking charge of completing the project.
“Sometimes it’s the same thing as when a bar gets really busy and you are just managing everyone and making sure they all do the right thing in their positions,” Aljaff said.
Larrouy humbly insisted that they focus on the projects that simply required “a little bit of knowledge of a screwdriver and paintbrush,” but the team members were also eager students, learning all they could from the skilled workers they hired.
As Aljaff and Larrouy built the coffered ceiling themselves, they walked online followers through the painstakingly precise process from literally top to bottom — ceiling, flooring and everything in between.
And as many workers are doing today, they also admitted to using AI to help them along the way. “We use ChatGPT a lot, to be honest,” Larrouy said.
The duo admitted that the AI chatbot became one of the tools they relied on the most using the tech for everything from explaining how their water filtration system worked to providing average prices and licensing laws to help them from getting swindled or fined.
And good neighbors have assisted along the way, too. Despite being a notoriously competitive field, Larrouy said their experience has been “really quite the opposite” with local industry titans — especially Dan Binkiewicz — being quick to share contacts and the mistakes they made.
But the Schmuck team still made plenty of their own.
Aljaff admitted that “a lot of it has been costly mistakes” — like when the team decided to lay the floors down in the basement too early, only to have them destroyed as construction continued.
“Oh, that was, like, $5,000,” he recounted, shaking his head and laughing it off.
“However, on the other side of that, we feel like we know every pipe, we know every wire, we know everything that goes on behind every wall in the venue. So we feel that as we open it, we’ll be in a place where whatever happens with the building, we’ll know it in and out and be able to fix it immediately.”
The team plans to finally tear down the scaffolding and welcome customers in a few weeks — Jan. 28 if all goes according to the most recent plan.
Regardless of all the shake-ups and mishaps, they’re confident the concept and cocktails will be the best they’ve ever served with Mediterranean-French fusion bites and creative cocktails.
“I’ve opened three bars before, but it’s never felt this good,” Aljaff shared.
