Wine & Spirits - April 2018 - 32

Ferris
It's tiny, crowded and a blast, especially
if your order chef Greg Proechel's blood
sausage, which comes to the table spicy
with grilled dates and crunchy with
toasted bread crumbs, sesame and
radish. Jennifer Lakin's list is almost
as tightly edited, with most everything
you'd want to drink, from a glass of Taille
Aux Loups's Triple Zéro Montlouis Brut,
to a Simon Bize Savigny or a Matthiasson Napa Valley Cabernet. -J.G.
44 W. 29th St.; 212-213-4420,
ferrisnyc.com

Freek's Mill
Freek's Mill put Gowanus on the wine
map with Alex Alan's hyperfocused list.
It's Loire chenin, cru Beaujolais and
Georgian wines all the time here, and
they happen to match amazingly well
with everything that leaves the woodfired oven, from roasted oysters to barbecued kohlrabi and dry-aged duck.
And, while you could spend a couple
hundred dollars on an aged bottle of
Nicolas Joly's Coulée de Serrant, most
everything else comes in well under
$100. -A.B.
285 Nevins St., Brooklyn;
718-852-3000, freeksmill.com

Gloria

Gramercy Tavern
There's something soul satisfying about
dinner at Gramercy Tavern that you don't
get from most of the ambitious tasting
menus around the city. Chef Michael
Anthony's elegant farm-to-table cuisine continues to astonish 12 years
on, highlighted by Chris Raftery's wine
list, encompassing the eclectic and the
best from the Finger Lakes to the Mosel,
Chablis to Piedmont and Sonoma's far
coast. -J.G.
42 E. 20th St.; 212-477-0777,
gramercytavern.com

WINE & SPIRITS

Hemlock

A richly textured sparkler from Maine, skin-contact fiano, savory spätburgunder
rosé, or chuggable pipeño: The entire list at Hemlock is under $100 and spans the
globe with natural producers from Czech Republic, Slovakia, Australia and Spain,
and with French, German and American bottles competing for the most real estate.
Sit at the bar where you can watch the chefs work on dishes like the fluke crudo
with kaffir lime oil. As far as the sweet potato bread that's been warmed in the
oven, torn into hunks and served with a smear of burnt pumpkin-leaf butter-order
it. You'll thank me later. They make kale cool again with their grilled rendition, and
the desserts are epic: Try the bay-leaf ice cream with fresh cranberries and cranberries soaked in red-wine caramel. -D.G.
65 Rivington St.; 646-649-2503, hemlocknyc.com

APRIL 2018

Diego Garcia was a sous chef at Le
Bernardin before moving downtown to
Contra. Phil Johnson, another Contra
alum, met Garcia during a stint pouring wine at Aldo Sohm Wine Bar. They
teamed up to open Gloria, a humble
spot mastering a meatless menu and
offering French and new California natural wines that fall in the sweet spot
of $50 to $75. The seafood is wild,
sustainable and from the north Atlantic. The crab is blanketed with saffroninfused bouillabaisse sabayon and
topped with nasturtium leaves while
the monkfish medallions laid across
a mound of silky potato-and-turnip
purée measures up to its three-star
sibling at Le Bernardin. -D.G.
401 W. 53rd St.; 212-956-0709,
gloria-nyc.com

photos: Ferris and Hemlock by Noah Fecks; Gloria by Katie June Burton

http://www.ferrisnyc.com http://www.freeksmill.com http://www.gloria-nyc.com http://www.hemlocknyc.com http://www.gramercytavern.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Wine & Spirits - April 2018