More and more restaurants, bars and cafés are starting to offer shareable bites with drinks, and the quality and inventiveness of the food is going up in parallel. And Amsterdam – with its work-life balance that means most people leave work at a sensible time – is finally starting to get on board with this. The Dutch have their borrelhapjes, of course, but there’s room to branch out from the deep-fried snacks and blocks of cheese – as moreish with mustard as they may be. I’m not sure what the Spanish call it, but the same principle applies with tapas. The Italians call this aperitivo, and they do it spectacularly well.
Either way, this first-drink-of-the-day meets early-evening snacks moment has a name in our house: Hapje Hour – which, incidentally, will be the name of my wine bar if the Mr. If I’m at home, it’ll perhaps be accompanied by some cheese and crackers or slices of chorizo if I’m out, it might be bitterballen or jamón.
Lillie grew up in his father’s shop, and that background of expertise shines in this new space, which he runs alongside business partner Stefanie Djie on Orchard Street.My favourite moment of the day is somewhere around 6.30 pm, when work is finished, it’s not yet time for dinner, and the kitchen is filled with the familiar glug-glug-glug sound of a just-opened bottle of wine being poured.
#BEST WINE BAR NEAR ME SKIN#
Skin Contact was opened in 2020 by New York wine veteran, Eben Lillie, whose father was one of the founders of Tribeca’s Chamber Street Wines and a pioneer in the stateside natural/low intervention wine movement. (For those craving a proper meal, there’s also a small dinner menu and a few actual tables.) Skin Contact Lean back, split a bottle from the extensive list with a friend, and order from a menu of elevated bar snacks like whipped lemon ricotta, crudité, and the crowd-pleasing fried chicken sandwich. The space feels like the world’s chicest living room, with Panton chairs and plush De Sede couches.
On Thursday evenings they hold weekly wine classes that you can-and should-book in advance, though walk-ins are welcome. Run by sommelier Grant Reynolds, the bar offers not only great wine (with everything from natural Chardonnays from young Canadian vintners, to classic old world Barolos from Italy). One of the newest additions to the Lower East Side wine scene is Parcelle, a formerly online-only wine retailer that set up roots with a tiny Division Street bar this past summer. In addition to a wine list and elevated bar snacks, Parcelle offers weekly wine classes. His sister, Paris McGarry, is responsible for the wine program. The bar comes from self-proclaimed former teen chef Fynn McGarry, who staged at restaurants like Noma and Eleven Madison Park. The most intimate of the bunch, tucked in an unassuming block of Broome Street mostly known for laundromats and bodegas, Gem Wine is the casual little sibling of new-Nordic tasting menu restaurant Gem, located just around the corner. There are few better places to take in the Dimes Square scene. Wine-list wise, it’s a crowd pleasing selection of mostly European producers and relatively affordable, with glasses starting at $13 and bottles at $42. In warmer months, if you can snag a sidewalk table, order a bottle and a mushroom pâté or steak tartar, you could almost be tricked into thinking you’re on Canal St. Le Dive aims to recreate that classic Parisian tabac experience: a lively space with a long zinc bar, neon tube lights, and cafe tables topped with glasses of wine and simple jambon beurre. (It doesn't hurt that the LES, for short, is also home to super-cool Nine Orchard hotel, set on the huddle of bars, restaurants, and shops known as Dimes Square.) Whether it’s a familiar, juicy red you're craving or the joy of discovering something totally new, there's no better place to drink wine in the New York City right now. Now, you can’t walk a block without finding a great place to pop in for a quick glass at the bar, or a bottle to linger over with friends-and you won’t find any other neighborhood with as many carefully chosen lists in the entire city. From a resident’s perspective, though, it feels like it happened overnight.
Ten Bells, the neighborhood's longstanding natural wine and tapas bar, was ahead of the curve when it opened its doors back in 2008, and the others have slowly trickled in since. “The wine scene on the Lower East Side hasn't all of sudden emerged out of nowhere, so much as it has vastly and rapidly expanded since the early days of Ten Bells,” says Eben Lillie, owner of Skin Contact, an intimate wine bar on Orchard Street with boundary pushing bottles. Over the past few years, a standout landscape of wine lists has been bubbling up across New York City's buzzy Lower East Side and this past summer, it exploded.
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