The NYC Wine Hit List, Spring 2025 Edition: Compagnie Flatiron, Popina, Quarters, and More

There’s so much to say about Popina, from its signature hot chicken Milanese to its impeccably curated wine list and expansive backyard. However, the real star is, well, the star himself — James O’Brien, culinary student turned Union Square Hospitality Group (Gramercy Tavern, Union Square Cafe, etc.) alum turned Brooklyn restaurateur. O’Brien flawlessly nails classic old-school hospitality, a seemingly fleeting aspect of much Brooklyn dining these days. Popina is also home to one of the most rewarding happy hours in town, featuring $15 pastas and $10 rotating by-the-glass pours. If bottles are more your thing, you might turn to the 2021 Ioppa ‘Rusin’ Rosato ($56) from Piedmont, both an indicator of O’Brien’s love of the nebbiolo grape, and proof that a bit of age on rosé can defy common beliefs. Its zesty aspects harmonize with the hot chicken. But Popina also has deep cuts of Burgundy, as with the 2020 Domaine de Cassiopée Aligoté En Gerlieus ($85), which highlights O’Brien’s talents in finding great quality in France, here in a bottle from the Hautes Côtes de Beaune, where Hugo Mathurin and Talloulah Dubourg are proving the capability of this ‘secondary’ Burgundian white variety.

Tucked away on a second-floor space in Tribeca, the bar at Quarters opened its doors in late 2024, and that hidden-yet-hospitable feel has already made it indispensable. Located above its namesake concept store, the bar is the brainchild of Quarters and In Common With founders Nick Ozemba and Felicia Hung, in partnership with Nicole and Jennifer Vitagliano of Raf’s and The Musket Room. The list is small yet thoughtful, and leans slightly niche. Expect around 10 rotating glass pours. Recent highlights include Guillaume Michaut’s Chablis from 2018, as well as a 14-year-old pour of Malvira’s Roero Renesio Riserva Nebbiolo. On the bottle front, the Domaine Saint Cyr La Galoche Blanc ($76) shows that Beaujolais’ charms extend beyond gamay — in this case to a zingy Chardonnay from Raphael Saint Cyr that frames the the region’s potential for white wines. If you’re thinking more domestic, as a lot of people are in 2025, consider the 2022 Cruse Wine Co. ‘Monkey Jacket’ Red Blend ($80), from a kitchen-sink New Californian mix of red grapes aged in neutral vessels. Food options are equally breezy; in terms of snacks, the mushroom toast on a crusty baguette drenched in garlic, sherry, and parsley, is not to be missed.

While neighborhood wine bars have been popping up for well over a decade in Williamsburg, few have garnered as much industry attention as With Others. Spearheaded by Shanna Nasiri, who left her pre-pandemic tech job to pursue her passion for wine, its compact list highlights natural minded producers, mostly in France, Italy, and the United States, who focus on indigenous varieties. In addition to rotating by-the-glass options, Nasiri also keeps things (figuratively) spicy in the kitchen by welcoming local chefs for mini residencies. That limits the menu offerings, though the mentality is quality over quantity; a recent jaunt presented confit sunchokes and gigante beans prepared with caramelized squash, garlic confit, and bread crumbs, which paired with a salty, Sicilian white blend from Barraco ($17/glass). You also might delight in the 2023 Domaine de la Taille aux Loups ‘Montlouis Remus,’ ($88), a prime example from the Blot family of how Loire chenin has become a new icon, in this case from 50- to 80-year-old vines. If you’re more into red, the 2022 Gemma Miró Garnatxa Les Agulles ($94) from Catalonia underscores why Miró should be a household name — at least in households that dig unsulfured garnatxa.

The team at Ops just about perfected what feels like a quintessential Brooklyn formula: sourdough pizzas that hint at Naples but are very much their own thing, tied to an expansive natural-minded wine selection. They doubled down by adding Leo in 2019, and over time, each has found its own way to shine — in Leo’s case with items like a New York-style pie, and notably, a list that could easily show up in a restaurant with a lot more fussy food than pizza.

Where the wine program at Ops can feel freewheeling, bottles plucked from the wall and such, Leo comes across as more low-key — in a good way — perhaps because of the tidy, printed two-page list. Don’t let that fool you: The largely French selections here are a compendium of many of the important names in the naturalist realm: L’Octavin in the Jura and Vincent and Marie Tricot in the Auvergne, plus others like La Stoppa in Italy’s Emilia, Sam Vinciullo in Australia. There’s also a clear long view of talent in these regions, so that Champagne from the iconoclastic Charles Dufour sits next to those of more traditional David Léclapart. French pioneers like Mark Angeli and Leon Barral get their due. It’s a nearly encyclopedic view of this approach to wine.

The sum of buzz around Foxface has been significant — in no small part thanks to chef David Santos’ cooking which includes roasted whole fish that rewards the fearless, pasta in novel forms, and pork tongue with a tonnato sauce. It is defiant in the best way, if not everyone’s cup of kombucha — as owners Ori Kushnir and Sivan Lahat seem to want it.  And yes, it’s the latest, and one of the greatest, examples of exceptional cooking talent in what at least bills itself as a wine-bar format. Santos understands how fine-dining works, having put in time at Per Se and Bouley, and the effect here is to take that skill and plant a flag on embracing the unfamiliar.  The wine selections reflect that too, in a way that feels confident and informed. The list has crept just a bit more traditional of late, but still embraces postmodern stars (Jules Métras in Beaujolais, Hiyu’s Nate Ready in Oregon) while looking a bit over the horizon, with bottles like Escoda Sanahuja’s Les Paradetes ($82), a red blend from Catalonia, or La Noche Y Tu ($98), a blend of red hybrid grapes from Vermont’s La Montañuela.

We probably shouldn’t even be telling you this but … much like Nice Matin uptown, Harry’s has long been an open secret among the city’s serious, long-haul wine cognoscenti, namely because owner Harry Poulakakos has been building his cellar for more than a half-century to be deep with classic Burgundy, Bordeaux and more. That work continues with head sommelier Jacob Daugherty, such that even the regular list at the Side Bar (perfectly cozy to share a bottle) goes deep with picks like the Rudi Pichler Federspiel Grüner Veltliner ($18/glass, $70/bottle) from Austria’s Wachau or 2003 Bartolo Mascarello Barolo ($450). Here’s the move wherever you sit: Ask for a sommelier, and ask them for the full list (which only contains a small fraction of the 30,000 or so selections), along with some guidance. Yes, this remains a Wall Street steakhouse, with all the accompanying vibes. But it’s also a reasonably priced haven for the curious wine drinker, baller or otherwise.

This Dimes Square-adjacent sake bar is the work of three alumni of Decibel, the city’s original sake bar (which remains on point and popular after 30 years). Yuri Itakura, Shintaro Cho, and Arianna Cho came together to bring perhaps a more low-key and food-forward approach to sake, and one that makes it a perfect place for the sake-curious to discover what they like. The intended ethos taps into Yuri and Cho’s upbringing in late-’80s Japan, but the design is very 2020’s slimmed-down. Food is similarly low key: karaage (of course), udon with mentaiko-spiked mayo, a pork shabu-shabu, oden in the winter. But Asoko’s superpower is the constant presence of its owners tableside, pouring tastes of what excites them. You can’t go wrong with classics here, like a Midorikawa Junmai ($75), but the less expected cuts are where the excitement lies, as with a Daishichi Honjozo Kimoto ($65) that applies old-fashioned brewing techniques to the fortified honjozo style, often considered of lower quality but in this case wonderfully lifted and savory.

The Tavern somehow remains one of New York’s best-kept wine secrets, perhaps because Red Hook remains a relative transit desert. Those willing to make the trek aren’t complaining, because the list here is a wonder, deep on what amounts to big names for the well informed about postmodern France and beyond: Domaine du Collier, Champagne Marguet, Jean-Louis Dutraive, Meinklang; as well as more staid classics (Volnay’s D’Angerville family, the Rhône’s Domaine Jamet). Thank the omnivorous thirst of owner Billy Durney, whose interest in wine now parallels his expertise in barbecue (Hometown BBQ). If being a tavern diner means you can drink Domaine de la Romanée Conti — or, more a bottle of Pierre Guillemot’s Savigny-lès-Beaune ($124), if you feel like preserving some of your retirement savings — with with burgers and a standout shrimp cocktail, well, we’re very here for it.

From the start, this pitch-perfect Carroll Gardens neobistro has had a wine list to match its quiet tweaking of French classics. (Its leeks vinaigrette remains one to beat.) Wine here is guided by Nick Ferrante, an alum of Paul Grieco’s Terroir, who’s an omnivore when it comes to styles and trends. A lightly chilled red like La Porte Saint-Jean Biturica ($74) from the Loire can inhabit space right next to La Staffa Verdicchio ($64) from Italy’s Marche. There’s no shortage of notable names (Antoine Arena, Envinate) but also more than a few surprises. Notably absent? Any sense of dogma. This is a contemporary list from a team that clearly loves wines across the spectrum, to match an exceptional menu, all of which makes it one of our favorite modern French bistros in New York.

It’s heartening to think that, as with The Four Horsemen, Noreetuh is now a decade old — in part because Jin Ahn’s neo-Hawaiian bistro can be easy to miss along the thrum of First Avenue, but also because the very concept was never on anyone’s next-big-thing lists. Managing partner Ahn, a Per Se alum, has not only persevered, but also continued to build one of the city’s most charming wine lists. Aged riesling is often considered the focus, but scratch a bit more and you’ll find Ahn’s fondness for classic Burgundy, modern German wines like Wasenhaus, and especially well-priced older Bordeaux. If Bordeaux isn’t exactly fashionable right now, Noreetuh’s picks are less a matter of trophy hunting than a chance to be reminded why the region’s wines have generations of fans. In other words, a bottle like the 1994 Château Lascombes ($185) is a thing you can indulge here — or you can go more chill with a weeknight gem like the Burlotto Barbera d’Alba ($69).

Back in the mists of time, around 2003, a spot called 360 Van Brunt Street opened in Red Hook. 360 was a nexus for a lot of what would become a template today’s: neobistro cooking that was French but not forcibly so, and a selection of wines that might have been “nonconformist” but didn’t yet have a nomenclature. This sui generis spirit feels revived at Oma Grassa, which opened in 2022 in a less remote part of Brooklyn — in the shadow of Barclays Center. Baumgart clearly got the memo that pizzerias are a good place for this sort of wine exploration —  but the omnivorous nature of the naturally tilting list is, in fact, very much his doing. Which is to say that he’s not only an experienced chef (Prune, Diner, Houseman) and has perfected New York-style pies in an electric oven; he has also unlocked how to satisfy fans of the natty canon (riesling from Stein, reds from Le Coste) with none of the copycatting found on so many lists. Someone — namely Baumgart — has been paying attention, to embrace everything from white Bordeaux from Domaine De L’Alliance or Montesecondo’s Rosso from Tuscany ($75).

What to say? Terroir was the original gonzo wine bar, and Paul Grieco remains at it, bringing his punk edge to the wide world of wine. That continues to make this a place to explore the great other of France — neither standard hipster fodder, nor classed growths. Or maybe the classed growths: Who else would champion the white wine of second-growth Bordeaux Cos d’Estournel? What’s become evident is that Grieco’s decades in the industry have yielded the connections to secure wines great and small, jumbled together in what remains one of the most readable and quirky wine lists around. (Pro tip: Scour the Bourgogne Rouge picks for some great deals.) There’s deep cuts from Alsace, the Iberian peninsula, and of course, Grieco’s once-and-always love: riesling.

Parcelle is a familiar name to wine geeks in town, mostly from its origins as a retail shop opened by wine pro Grant Reynolds, when he was also at Charlie Bird and Pasquale Jones. Affiliations have shuffled, but today Parcelle is a proper wine bar of its own at the edge of Dimes Square, with an offshoot in Greenwich Village and sibling restaurants like Sunn’s. Reynolds’ comfort zone is Burgundy for sure — the region is the only one to get its own callouts on the list — but fear not: We’re talking Burgundy, Lower East Side style. Which is to say you can happily occupy yourself with Fanny Sabre’s Beaune Rouge Clos des Renardes ($140) or AMI’s Bourgogne Blanc La Tête Dans les Nuages ($90), while also living very large should the spirit move you. (If the spirit moves you to drink Clos Fornelli from Corsica or Etna Bianco from I Vigneri, that’s cool, too.)

For a long time, the original Ten Bells on Broome Street was a fort of natty-wine defiance, back to its founding days with Philippe “Fifi” Essome. It was perhaps almost too self-evident a move for Ten Bells to open an annex in Bushwick, but what’s impressive is how — counterintuitively — the younger Brooklyn sibling presents as just a bit more grown up, in both vibe and wine selections. We wouldn’t call it “mild mannered,” but picks here go long on the best of contemporary European naturalism in  more subdued tones: Les Hautes Terres Celeste ($96) from Limoux in France’s Languedoc, La Rural’s Malvasia de Sitges ($70) from Spain’s Catalonia. It’s the perfect fit for a neighborhood now shifting into its adulting phase, with just enough natural-wine cred to hold its own, but perhaps with a bit more chill.

We continue to sing the praises of the selections at this Williamsburg bar precisely because it’s known for so many things that aren’t wine. (See: absinthe, cocktails.) Rarely do you find such an eminently drinkable list of mostly forward-thinking French producers. There is of course plenty of Muscadet — try the various crus of Fay d’Homme — and Champagne because oysters are key to the experience here. But there’s a also great focused roster of reds, too — especially from Beaujolais and southern France. You might look for the reds of Raphaëlle Guyot, from very northwestern Burgundy, or to heady bottles like Château Falfas ($75) from Bordeaux or Nicolas Carmarans’ Mauvais Temps ($80), from high in the Massif Central, with brandade or a bavette steak.