BARS & RESTAURANTS • First Round
Last Monday evening, I arrived at Lei Wine with a pedigreed food writer/cookbook author and FOUND contributor; I ran into another FOUND team member (and former line cook) eating al fresco; Slacking about Lei with the FOUND team after the fact, co-founder Lockhart Steele raved that he “absolutely loved it.” So did I. So did the person I was with. So does, seemingly, everyone.
Opened in June, the wine bar has been picking up heat since. The reasons start with Lei’s location on Doyers Street, on that curved lane in the middle of Chinatown, home to Nom Wah Tea Parlor, once among New York’s most violent passages, now one of its cutest — downtown charm nonpareil.
On approach, dark, cherry wood paneling frames the door and a counter window under a pastel orange and white striped awning. Inside, the cherry woods continue, on countertops and tables, placed in the standard small Manhattan restaurant layout: two-tops lining the sides, larger tables in the middle, a beautiful emerald-green-tiled service bar in the back that seats two. Silver shelves holding bottles of wine climb toward the ceilings, which are lined with panels to dampen the decibels. Lit beeswax candlesticks are on each table and green Sabre chopsticks at each place setting (a touch that especially delighted our ranks).
Owner Annie Shi (of King fame) has, in the press, talked about Lei being a stop-through kind of spot, for people to have a glass and some snacks on their way to a larger dinner in the neighborhood. That’s one way to play it. Lei’s 25-page wine list — prominently full of low-invention, dry bottles meant to pair with the entire menu — is ostensibly the center-of-gravity here. It’s also a profoundly modest undersell. The small-but-mighty 15-item menu’s offerings are, per our collated reports, a hit on just about every level, more than enough to build a night around, some dishes tempting you to order them twice (or at least another side of rice, as we did, to sop up their sauces).
My two-top started light — a snack of pickled cucumbers, tomatoes, and celery tingling with green Sichuan peppercorns, and a rectangle of cool omelette in a pool of neon green scallion oil — before diving straight into the menu’s deep end. There we reveled in fried soft-shell crab slathered in sweet, fiery Singaporean chili sauce, with some purple wax beans and vermicelli; a dish of (hand-rolled!) cat’s ear noodle dotted with cumin-flecked lamb and herbs; and the coup de grace, a massive hunk of “sweet and sour” beef short rib, coated in a deep maroon strawberry jam slick. To clean it up, that aforementioned white rice, made with little diced pieces of sweet potato, more than did the trick (and was far better than it sounds). Dessert was a light, lovely kiwi granita with slices of Frog Hollow Farms pluots.
We sadly missed the riff on beef carpaccio that was on special another night — pounded flat and marinated in chili oil, Chinese black vinegar, and mushroom powder, with a significant circle of chives on top. One of our FOUND colleagues called it one of the best dishes of the year. Others raved about the frito misto of whiting. Some things didn’t work for everyone: On our table, we only wished that omelet was heated; for others, the lamb noodle didn’t quite hit.
But those are minor quibbles. We all agree that in the firmament of New York’s growing (ostensibly casual) wine bar scene, Lei is setting a new standard for punching above one’s weight, a more-than-the-sum-of-its-charms sterling success. –Foster Kamer
→ Lei Wine (Chinatown) • 15-17 Doyers St • Daily 5-11p • Reserve.