Spring Menus and Side Projects
I spent $47 on a glass of wine at Stars and it somehow felt like a steal
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.
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Spring was fully switched on in New York City. McCarren Park was full of people walking their dogs and showing off thigh tattoos with real conviction. Margaritas everywhere. The terrace at Bar Valentina was completely packed—Gen Z-ers smoking cigs and speaking in questionably authentic accents.
The menus are keeping pace. I had an asparagus gribiche-inspired thing at Bistrot Ha that felt like it had been waiting all year to show up. A crisp-as-can-be little gem salad at The Four Horsemen achieves the freshness of a crisp gose beer on a sunny afternoon. Upstate, Stissing House is repping favas pretty hard, and Casa Susanna is grilling ramps and throwing them atop the most exciting beef tartare you’ve ever had.
My official excuse for going into the city was to sit down with Nikita Malhotra, wine director and co-owner of Smithereens, to talk about how restaurants are starting to adopt editorial strategies to extend their point of view beyond the four walls of the dining room. Beyond her absolutely iconic Smithereens Zine, there’s also King’s newsletter A Nibble and a Glass of Wine, Ryan Bartlow’s writing around Ernesto’s and Bartolo, and a growing number of small projects that that feel more like independent publications than e-mail marketing.
I wrote about this a bit last year, but it feels more real now. It’s a really interesting moment for independent restaurant media. Infinite niches to occupy. Infinite ways to make your concept legible.
The Kill Sancerre hat is here. Get one before it sells out.
Here’s what I’m paying attention to this week:
Tasting Notes
Michel Gahier Macvin du Jura — In my ongoing attempt to stack as much ambitious restaurant adventures into a single NYC day without getting too drunk, I’ve developed a new lunch move: a 2 oz pour of dessert wine. This one—at the bar at Four Horsemen last Thursday—was Michel Gahier’s Macvin, served alongside a blue crab and poached egg situation with tons of clarified butter and a big piece of aggressively crusty baguette. If you don’t know it, Macvin is a fortified Jura specialty: fresh grape must blended with marc (grape spirit), then aged oxidatively, landing somewhere between a mistelle and a young vin de liqueur. Gahier’s version leans nutty, honeyed, and lightly spiced, with enough lift to keep it from feeling heavy. The sweetness didn’t mute the spice so much as round it out, smoothing the heat while locking into the richness of the egg and the butter running through the whole dish.
