Lower Manhattan's Asian Wine Bars
Plus: Mullineux Schist Chenin, some very good coffee, and the Alaskan black cod hidden in Daniel Humm's new restaurant.
Thirst Behavior is a project about wine, taste, and the social performances that form around them, the rituals of enjoyment shaped by status, media, money, and desire. Wine is the entry point; the real subject is how taste gets made, circulated, and contested, especially in New York and the Hamptons, where leisure and tastemaking overlap most visibly.
You can find my most recent feature here.
This post is for paid subscribers. Friday features are always free, but if you want the weekly intel and ongoing education—plus to support independent wine writing that doesn’t do scores or sponsors—upgrade whenever it feels right.
If you’d like to work together or have consulting inquiries, pitches, or scoops, please email me at bodhilanda@gmail.com.
Monday I had two free hours before the Caper media launch party, so I did a bang-bang-bang, of sorts, through lower Manhattan. First stop: Lei, for a glass of South African Chenin from Mullineux and their yuba cabbage roll — julienned watermelon radish gently warmed but still toothsome over tofu skin wrapped in cabbage leaves. The whole dish sits in a vegetable broth so fragrant and gently umami that I would have been happy just sipping on that. Then I ran over to Lai Rai (shoutout to Rico for the original tip) where I had a glass of red from China and learned from the wine guy there about a trifecta of Asian wine bars in lower Manhattan: Lei (Chinese-American), Lai Rai (Vietnamese), and Sunn’s (Korean). I didn’t make it to Sunn’s. Instead I ended up at Eel Bar for a wet martini and some particularly herbaceous meatballs with those thick-cut, Spanish-style fries.
Here’s what I’ve got for you this week
