We’d all love to have mountains of free pizza and burgers, and bathtubs overflowing with beer (the kind of dark water you’d love to be saddled with), but…You can’t have everything you want, and you got to live with the New York you have. Which basically means happy hour, cheap drinks and free food. Why is free pub-grub so important? Ahhh…ever been broke in New York? If you’d ever had to decide between a pizza and a drink, with loose change jingling in your pockets and nothing much else, you’d know very well how sweet a cold beer tastes, and how your stomach rumbles and you twist and turn at night, but somehow the sleep just won’t come. 

Well, broke or not, you no longer need to make that Devil’s choice.  For a dollar plus drink, you can gorge for free on pizza slices and buffett spreads, trays full of burgers, dogs and sausages and lots of free snacks. Below is a master list of NYC bars and pubs offering free food with cheap drinks. Have fun.

Alligator Lounge: Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is ground zero for free bar food, and the bar which got the ball rolling on this free food fest in NYC is the Alligator Lounge, where you can grab a brick oven pizza if you buy a drink all night long. Regulars play pool and watch games at the bar, groups keep coming in and going out, downing truckloads of pizas and washing it down with pitchers of Guiness. Photo credit - Garrett Murray/Flickr

Time was when all you saw were chicks in tight jeans and some of the guys from the neighbourhood just hanging around in the evenings. Of late though, its getting too crowded by half, probably because word of the free pizza has gotten around, and there’s all kinds of folks, and gangs of teenagers streaming in and out. And you have to pay an extra $2 for toppings. Besides, with other bars and lounges being spruced up and new ones coming up everywhere, the Alligator looks even more seedy now, and if it weren’t for the free pizza, they’d probably be out of business. But it’s still the Alligator, where people live off the darn pizza, and enjoy it too.  Info: 600 Metropolitan Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11211 (near Lorimer St.); (718) 599-4440; www.alligatorlounge.com

Crocodile Lounge: Let’s just say that the Crocodile is the rich Manhattan cousin to the Alligator’s down home Brooklyn seediness, if you can excuse saying rich and free food in the same sentence. Drinks are costlier, it’s less crowded and the clientele is slightly less diverse and more ‘dignified’, but not by much. Otherwise, it’s about the same. Info: 325 E 14th St (1st & 2nd Ave) East Village New York NY; (212) 477-7747

The Watering Hole: Formerly Tracy J’s Watering Hole, it’s now known simply as the Watering Hole. While it’s lost of bit of the atmosphere with the name change, there’s still weird music belting out from the karoake, mostly drunk chicks and plenty of regulars downing rounds of beers make this more of a regular bar than a free food joint, so you can actually hope to have a fun time and get drunk yourself. Plenty of screens to watch the games, the staff is pretty good at their work and friendly, so you don’t get riled up with botched orders or being ignored. The pub offers a free food buffett during happy hour on weekdays from 5.30-6.30 p.m. The buffett keeps changing so not much point in trying to pin it down to specifics, but hey…It’s free. Info: 106 E 19th St (Irving Pl. & Park Ave. South) Gramercy New York NY; (212) 674-5783

Hank’s Saloon: A Brooklyn institution, and one of the few bars which remains just the same, Hank’s Saloon offers $2 beer with free BBQ sponsored by Soul! Sausage. It’s not just about the food - It’s the live Country music, the cheap drinks, the shows, the vibe, the $2 beer, the free burgers, all kinds of people, young and old, black, white, brown, you name it - Everyone gets drunk and there’s country music blaring out and punks breakdancing with lovely young chicks. Generally speaking, its a wild scene and you’re sure to have a good time, along with the free food . It’s the quintessential New York experience which has been lost somewhere in the glitter of the high-rises and big hotels and the political correctness of the elites of downtown Manhattan, which sad to say, has spread like a virus into Brooklyn. Thankfully, Hank’s Saloon is one of the last known such refuges left in Brooklyn. Info: 46 3rd Ave ( Atlantic Ave ) Brooklyn New York; (718) 625-8003

There are a heck of a lot more bars and pubs and lounges who offer free food, including the Rodeo Bar on 3rd Ave which serves nachos and wings, rocking Horse cafe on 8th Ave with baskets of tortilla chips and salsa bowls at the bar, Trash Bar in Williamsburg which dishes out tater tots along with drinks, Lost & Found on Franklin St. which piles up bagels and hot dogs, and Rudy’s in the Hell’s Kitchen neighbourhood which offers free hot dogs.

Remains to be said that most of these joints serve out free snacks just to maintain the liquor intake, which would be cut down a lot without the food. I mean, it’s quite easy to have a couple more drinks when you have free food on the table. So, the bars which offer ‘real’ food, as opposed to nibblers which will just keep you on the edge and away from getting soused or throwing up, are the ones you want to end up at, if you’re looking for free grub with a drink. And if you have any more bars you know of, feel free to add them to the list in the comments.