15 of the Best BYOB and No-Corkage-Fee Restaurants in New York

Luis Herrera’s sustainable seafood-driven cooking over at Ensenada, in Williamsburg, has garnered plenty of acclaim as of late. And should you seek some of the city’s best fish or shrimp tacos, you owe it to yourself to head directly here. On Wednesdays to reward yourself with waived corkage fees on both wine and mezcal (though, to be honest, Ensenada’s mezcal list is already one of the best in town). Co-owner Bryce David suggests choosing white wines with “maybe a little bit of skin contact. Think salt, acid, minerals.” This makes a ton of sense with a menu that highlights raw fish preparations, like cooling ceviches and chile-forward aguachiles. To be sure, the fish tacos are non-negotiable but don’t sleep on the tostadas or the fish of the day, served al pastor style with an incredibly smooth pineapple butter and fresh tortillas.

Okonomi Market, a collaboration between Japanese breakfast joint Okonomi and Japanese fish vendor Osakana, is essentially a daytime takeout place for bento boxes and rice bowls, but on Friday and Saturday nights, it morphs into Oko Omakase, a six-seat counter led by chef Daniel Lee. The seven-course menu of all local, wild seafood runs only $75, somewhat unheard of for omakase in NYC. This just leaves more money for wine, which you’re welcome to bring without any corkage fees. Here, lighter, fresher wines and maybe even something savory and orange, will be just the thing.

On Sunday evenings, Soho’s year-old seafood-focused Principe is the ideal spot for a dramatic raw bar finale to the weekend. Here, chef Abram Bissell (formerly of The Modern) gently pairs red prawns with a green coriander and jalapeño sauce, scallops with pistachio and sorrel, and caviar and burrata with potato chips, making it a place for all wines white, rosé, or bubbly, as even the more substantial entrées and pastas tend be lighter and brighter. That said, a guest recently brought sake, a smart play to the savory, more saline side of the menu.

There are plenty of great restaurants in Chinatown that allow for BYOB – Wu’s Wonton King and Spicy Village amongst them — but there’s just something magical about Peking duck’s ability to flex with just about any style of wine. Champagne? Bubbles love rich, roasted duck. A big bold red? Why even bother with hoisin sauce? The Mott Street location is a long-beloved haunt for the wine world and the restaurant has fully accepted its role as its clubhouse.

Call (212) 227-1810 for reservations.

Once most of the tourists have cleared out, Sundays in Rockefeller Center can be kind of lovely, all the lovelier once you navigate downstairs and through a maze to one of the tawny velvet booths at Jupiter, the second restaurant from the women behind King. Here, wine director Lauren Hoey has devised an impressive Italy- and France-heavy wine list, but during so-called Sauced on Mondays, she opens the doors to whatever her diners (many, restaurant industry friends) want to bring. Regulars have organized themed tasting nights (Bordeaux versus Napa, say) and the restaurant has seen culty Barolos from Lorenzo Accomasso and Bartolo Mascarello, Les Coqueries from Stéphane Bernaudeau in France’s Loire and coveted Champagne from Ulysse Collin, any of which will match Jess Shadbolt and Clare de Boer’s supreme pastas with ease.

Across the ice rink at Rockefeller, Naro (the third restaurant from Ellia and Junghyun “JP” Park of Atomix and Atoboy) has also improved the prospect of a Sunday night. Here, diners can bring up to two bottles of their choosing, to either drink with a coursed tasting menu in the main dining room, or more casually, à la carte in the bar area. Both menus call on touchstones of Korean Hansik cuisine, through the lens of chef Nate Kuester, whose work is detailed and remarkably beautiful. In choosing bottles to bring, take note of beverage director Jhonel Faelnar’s wine list — deep in German and Austrian Riesling, red and white Burgundies and lighter reds — and leave your heavy reds at home. Here, guests can choose to drink from glasses from local Glasvin, a company based in New York State, or The One created by U.K. wine writer Jancis Robinson. Also on offer on Sundays: truffles and caviar at market price.

With Olmsted, Patti Ann’s, and the now-closed Petite Patate, chef Greg Baxtrom carved out a stretch of Brooklyn’s Vanderbilt Avenue as his domain, and Five Acres, his Manhattan extension, delivers the same familiarity by way of burgers and satisfying Americana, like spinach artichoke dip, braised short ribs, and mac ’n’ cheese. Order a rose hip vesper and then bring along a wine that’s bold-enough for a Wisconsin cheddar cheeseburger or very juicy to cool the carrot hot sauce Baxtrom serves on his chicken wings. Whereas most BYOB takes place in the evening hours, Five Acres welcomes guests to bring wine all day on Sunday, which means you can even bring your choice rosé to have with a brunch-time quiche.

With its family-sized servings, Al Badawi is the sort of place that begets a big table of friends and a couple extra corkscrews. The arched oven in the Brooklyn Heights location is the source of roasted meats (from co-owner Abdul Elenani’s own farm in New Jersey) and stews and a cheesy pistachio pizza that has become a compulsory order, in addition to shawarma, numerous kebabs, and dips from the kitchen. Elenani and co-owner Akram Nassir recently opened a second Al Badawi on the Upper East Side, further expanding on an already impressive number of restaurants throughout the city. The dishes here are rich in spices and texture, so opt for a wine that can carry its own.

With hundreds of outposts around the world, Da Long Yi Hot Pot is known for spicy vats of broth for communal cooking à la Chengdu, and lengthy lists of offal (goose intestines, gizzards, beef tripe, etc.) to cook in it. Its Long Island City location allows for BYOB. Da Long Yi says that 20% of people bring beer, 60% bring wine, and 10% bring Baijiu. We’d recommend bringing something that you can chill way down and drink by the gulpful.

An outlier in the Sunday-Monday crowd, Popina allows its guests to BYOB on Wednesdays. Since opening in 2017, this spot, just across from the shipyards along Columbia Street in Cobble Hill, has attracted wine devotees from all over the city. James O’Brien’s wine list is ever-expanding into Italy, France, and the United States, and while there’s little left to be desired, on Wednesdays, he’s open to whatever it is you want to bring. The storefront of Popina is quite small, but out the back door, there’s an enormous patio and enclosed dining room, leaving lots of room to convene with friends and your good bottles, especially in nice weather, with plates piled with orecchiette, pesto, and favas, and the restaurant’s defining hot chicken Milanese with magenta cabbage slaw and subduing ranch dressing.

For nearly 30 years, Neil Ganic’s BQE-adjacent restaurant has been a destination for those looking for dependable, simply prepared seafood dishes. It’s a menu of hits, from classic Niçoise salad and a tremendous charred salmon burger to garlicky mussels Provençal with fries, that makes itself available to wine of all sorts. Sitting outside on a warm spring night, with a little imagination, the rush of cars on the highway below can sound like waves. Pack a bottle of salty muscadet into an ice bucket and go all-in. Just make sure you pour a small glass for Ganic; he’ll be the one in the porkpie hat.

Walk-ins only.

A sommelier darling for at least a couple of decades, this restaurant in Woodside, Queens has long proven that off-dry Riesling was made for fiery curries and chile-flecked Thai dishes. While there are certainly options here for those uninterested in heat, to miss out on the undereye sweat and near out-of-body experience of SriPraPhai’s spice, only quelled by an ice-cold dose of lightly sweet Riesling, would be a bummer. Look to Germany’s prancy feinherbs for dishes like the ever-popular, (and oddly cloudlike) catfish salad and something riper and more substantial, like an off-dry spätlese for omelets with nam prik or gingery sausage dishes.

Call (718) 899-9599 to make a reservation. Cash only.

I’d like to wish you good luck getting into Lucali with your bottle of wine. The line for the wait list often starts at 3 p.m., curling around the block by 3:30. But should you make it through the swinging screened door in Carroll Gardens, with wine still in your bottle (and cash still in your pockets; it’s cash only), you will be greatly rewarded with Mark Iacono’s candlelit pizza and the best calzones (ricotta and garlic, highly recommended) around. The buzzy pizza shop has become a go-to for certain celebs, but the pies remain just as crispy and bubbled. It’s a great place to bring that bottle of Champagne that’s been kicking around the back of your fridge. This way, should you find Taylor Swift making a return appearance, you can pour her a glass and have everyone swimming in a Champagne sea.

Walk-ins only.

Improbably, Noreetuh is a knock-out Hawaiian restaurant with a wine list stacked with a cutting-edge global selection of Riesling and Bordeaux back vintages — a program that shows off managing partner and wine director Jin Ahn’s wine proclivities for sure, and one that woos other wine industry professionals on the regular. Ever curious, Ahn keeps corkage at $30 a bottle every day, catering to regulars with good taste, but on Sundays, he knocks corkage down to just $10 and fills the restaurant with sommeliers in doing so. This way, he gets to taste all sorts of wines and gets to know diners’ palates, too. To go with the more than a dozen varieties of musubi, kimchi fried rice, and mochiko fried chicken served with King’s Hawaiian rolls, Ahn might most often recommend off-dry Riesling, but he’s set to make food suggestions for whatever you bring with you.

Bring a bottle to Michelin-starred One White Street in Tribeca most days and you’ll see a $75 corkage fee per bottle. But on Monday nights, corkage runs a cool $10. The menus here, from chef Austin Johnson (formerly of The NoMad and Paris’ Frenchie), mirrors what’s growing on Rigor Hill Farm up in Columbia County, New York. (The farm has a shop just around the corner.) For now, that means armloads of root vegetables and brassicas, but with spring on the way, comes the promise of tiny herbs and peas and favas. The wine list, from wine director Suzanne DeStio (ex-The Modern) and is a deep dive into many of the world’s top producers, which means that if you have a bottle you’ve been holding onto, Monday might be the time to hold it up against another such great.