East Village Staple Esperanto Boasts Vibrant Outdoor Seating Area

If you're in the East Village looking for a place to drink a few caipirinhas outdoors, Esperanto is certainly the most Instagrammable place you're gonna find.

The Brazilian restaurant, situated on the corner of Avenue C and East Ninth Street, has an outdoor eating area peppered with vibrant vintage table clothes and brightly colored chairs. The whole setup makes you feel like you're in a Life Magazine feature about South America from the 1970s.

"Esperanto the language was created to be a universal symbol of hope and an easily understood form of communication that hopefully people around the world could learn, and that's sort of the inspiration behind designing this space," Eric Goulange, the restaurant's manager, told Patch.

The indoors are as brightly designed as the outdoors, and the restaurant has live music acts almost every night of the week, Goulange said.

"The outdoor seating is a huge part of our business," he said. "This place comes alive to a different level in the summer. The door's open, there's a transparency that people feel."

Esperanto has been around since 1996, when the East Village was a completely different neighborhood, Goulange said. He says it's stuck around for so long despite skyrocketing rents because of community support.

"People come here all the time who used to come here a decade ago when they were in college and are like, 'I can't believe you're still here!' A lot of people have their stories here."