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Eater
15 hours ago
- Business
- Eater
A King Co-Owner Opens an Intimate Chinese American Wine Bar
Lei, a new wine bar, opens on Friday, June 6, on one of Chinatown's most historic streets, at 15-17 Doyers Street, along a winding car-free stretch of the neighborhood. It joins a new wave of Asian American wine bars that opened within a mile of each other in Lower Manhattan over the past year, like Ha's Snack Bar, a Vietnamese bistro, and Sunn's, serving Korean small plates, expanding what today's New York wine bars look and feel like. 'Doyer Street is just so iconic [and] historically significant,' says Lei's owner Annie Shi. Much of the open real estate in Chinatown is passed through word of mouth; it took time to find the right spot. There were various points where she wasn't sure she was going to be able to open a wine bar there, but she finally signed the lease in December 2024, just days out from her water breaking and giving birth. Across the board, Lei has been a labor of love; it's named 'as an homage to Shi's late sister Hannah (Lei was her Chinese given name),' per the release. Shi has made a name in New York for herself alongside Jess Shadbolt and Clare De Boer, partnering on King, in the West Village, and Jupiter, in Rockefeller Center, both with European-leaning menus. She'll remain involved in both, but Lei is her independent endeavor (much like De Boer has with her spot Stissing House). Lei references a modern take on the Chinese cooking that the Rego Park, Queens native grew up with, interwoven with her years as a restaurant owner and beverage director — a project she's been dreaming of for years. In a slender storefront like this one, even the smallest design details must be considered. There's no basement, so wine director and Heroes alum Matt Turner's bottle storage had to be thoughtfully positioned. And there's the all-electric kitchen: 'Obviously, gas is incredibly important for wok cooking, but to be frank, there are so many better places that do wok cooking around us, that's not going to happen here. So, okay, what else can we explore in Chinese cookery that is different?' she says of wanting to be considerate to the neighborhood. She added that she looked to wine bars in Paris, where they do so much with electric hookups, for some creative thinking. 'Steaming [and braising] is a big part of Chinese cooking that is suitable for wine because it's a little bit more delicate, you retain a lot of the natural flavors of the ingredient,' she says. For some, the electric set-up and small kitchen combo would be intimidating, but Lei's chef Patty Lee, an alum of Mission Chinese, says: 'I think the worst thing that can happen to you is having a blank canvas and staring at that. I feel more creative the more constraints there are.' The two spent a lot of time chatting through their collective dream menus. It's an edited list: There are fewer than 15 dishes on the menu, split into hot and cold sections. The hand-rolled cat's ear noodles, which Shi describes as a less 'rustic' version than what she grew up with, are tweaked to pair with wine and served with lamb braised in cumin and tomato. It's the kind of place to find specials that might include items like three-cup fresh squid, a play on the Taiwanese three-cup chicken. Lee also adapted a chrysanthemum salad recipe from her days running Kichin in Bushwick (which closed during the pandemic), on trend with other towering salads of late. 'The dressing is 90 percent tea that's been blended with vinegar — it feels like a bit more grown-up than the Vitasoy juice box.' While they considered outsourcing, Lee is making the sesame bread, shaobing, from scratch, served with a pat of butter. 'It's so delicious and kind of unexpected,' says Shi. Every wine bar needs its dessert: Lei will have two because Lee says she's 'such a sweets fiend.' To start, a guava shaved ice with pineapple guava, guava jelly, and tapioca; then there will be an eight treasure pudding with sticky toffee and vanilla ice cream. It's a take on a dessert staple of Chinese New Year, that Shi says her dad is obsessed with to the point that he keeps a freezer stockpile. 'Every family has a different version of what the eight treasures are. So it could be like black sugar, walnuts, or red bean,' Shi says. Overall, the idea is for the 24-seat Lei to be a walk-in-friendly spot. 'We really thought about what the difference is between a wine bar and a restaurant, and we wanted to make sure to keep that more casual feeling,' says Shi. There will be standing room at the intimate bar. Chinatown has many celebratory BYOB spots, and Shi wants Lei to offer something 'complementary.' She says, 'the idea was you can totally have a meal if you want, but more importantly, if you are going to dinner somewhere in the neighborhood' — on just this block alone, there's spots like Nom Wah Tea Parlor, Chinese Tuxedo, Taiwan Pork Chop House, and Tasty Hand-Pulled Noodles — 'you can stop by for a glass of wine before or after your meal to kind of make it a full evening.' Sign up for our newsletter.
Time Out
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Let Me Tell You: why your next bar snack might be steak frites
Back in 2021, TikTok discovered the $28 never-ending skirt steak and fries deal at Skirt Steak. Banking on the single item with a few supporting characters (the aforementioned fries and a side of greens), the Nomad restaurant achieved viral status, generating a steady line of influencers and those who had been influenced. A few years later, the price climbed to $45 (thanks, inflation)—and much like anything else that achieves buzz on TikTok, the hype died down as we moved on to the next. But now the steak frites craze is back, this time reemerging at bars across the city. While taprooms and lounges that solely specialize in nuts and pretzels in bowls certainly have their place, some of New York's best food can be found bellied up to the bar. Chinatown's Sunn's draws crowds for Sunny Lee's take on banchan just as much as it does for its wines curated by Parcelle. Williamburg's Bar Madonna (our Best New Bar pick for Best of the City Awards in 2024) keeps us properly boozed with amari and grappa and fed with osso buco croquettes and the appropriately meaty and cheesy smashed meatball parm. Yet, several emerging bars are leaning into American comfort food: meat and potatoes. Possibly a recession indicator, these bars are sliding steak frites down the same stretch they slide cold beers, somehow without draining our wallets. Steak frites is the star (and only player) at Funny Bar, part jazz bar, part restaurant in the Lower East Side. The space is definitely a bit of a design mashup, formerly housing NYC's first kosher Chinese restaurant in one life (peep the red and back columns), and a country bar with a mechanical bull pit in the other (AKA where the sunken dining room resides). While a bit of a hodgepodge in decor, the menu keeps it straightforward with only four items: Bar Steak Frites with Bordelaise at $29, a 'Big Steak' with tarragon butter at $69, salad at $17 and fries—not needed if you order the steak frites—at $12. While the steak frites were advertised as an appetizer when I visited last Saturday, my group of three left plenty full with two orders and a tacked-on wedge salad. Don't expect a cooking temp question; your filet mignon arrives perfectly pink and medium-rare. The fries are a slight step above the bodega variety, best used to mop up the last bits of gravy that pools around the meat. While I wish there was more salt and pepper here, and a more robust crust on the meat, for $29, it seems like a welcome end, or I suppose, a start, to a night out. For a deal with a drink attached, you can look at Gowanus's Liar Liar. Run by four friends whose collective resumes include stints at Bed Stuy's Bad Luck Bar and Steven Graf Import, the natural wine bar was adamant about creating a food menu that matched its thoughtfully curated bottles, one that goes above what they called 'typical wimpy wine bar fare.' What resulted are ol' reliable staples, a burger with a herby aioli, a chicken fried sando with a sweet and spicy slaw and a plate of steak frites smothered in a peppercorn aioli for $30. However, the deal of the day goes to the happy hour menu, as an order of steak frites and a bottle of your choice of red wine will only cost $69. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Jean 🇩🇴 (@jeaneatz) And then there's Lori Jayne, the dive-y back-kitchen at Bushwick's Alphaville, where chef Sam Braverman (no formal culinary training) is exceeding expectations of what dive bar food can be. Cooking up what he calls 'good food,' his version of bar food includes Sichuan-rubbed wings and Dr. Brown's stewed pork ladled on top of latkes. But it's his steak frites that have achieved viral status. One of the bar's most popular orders, the dish starts with a cut of chuck flap, seasoned with salt and pepper and basted with a cultured butter that's cooked down with beef trim. Sliced and placed over vinegar-brined fries, the steak is cloaked in a tingly Sichuan peppercorn sauce, a sauce that's made with freshly ground peppercorns to order. Served with a set of chopsticks for partaking, this above-the-bar (or above-the-dive-bar?) snack is only $20.
