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Lei opened on Doyers St. earlier this summer season.
Photograph: Matt Russell
Do you know it’s sizzling? Did I point out it’s sizzling? Have you ever heard — sizzling.
I’ve been mumbling some model of this to myself on the subway concerning the moist blanket of humidity that swaddles us all in these waning days of July, terrible August ascendant. On days like these, I nonetheless trek out to the steakhouses and the pasta-factory carbfests. However actually, what I need most are the locations that make magic in miniature. Locations to pattern just a few dishes, artfully composed, a glass or two of one thing — what you may want, and no more, on a to-be-determined first date, earlier than a protracted film at an off hour or when the temperature ticks as much as 95 within the shade. If I had been extra shameless, I’d name them snackstaurants. Extra typically, I name them godsends.
Snacks (not “small plates,” that are taxonomically distinct) have all the time been a secure wager on the metropolis’s wine bars, which proceed to proliferate at an astounding fee. (Astounding, since that is precisely the second so many fingers are being wrung concerning the declining curiosity in wine — how can we sq. that?) In days of outdated, “wine bar snack” often meant a finger bowl of unpitted olives or a pair boulders of whitening Parm. In these post-Wildair days, most do higher than that, and the perfect of the most recent new bunch do higher nonetheless. They’re not simply wine bars with meals; they’re wine bars with attention-grabbing meals. They’ve obtained a standpoint.
The reigning alpha of those canine days is Lei, from King associate Annie Shi, on the curving, pedestrian-only slip of Doyers Avenue in Chinatown. Shi’s said intention is to carry the Chinese language and Chinese language American flavors of her upbringing into the outdated wine-bar idiom; she developed the menu with Patty Lee, previously of Mission Chinese language Meals. Generally the substitutions are roughly direct — her tackle charcuterie pairs Chinese language-style ham from Woman Edison in North Carolina with Asian pears. But it surely’s much more thrilling to see her push out additional: slippery, snappy slices of chilly pickled celtuce interleaved with translucent dominoes of mung-bean jelly, or a fried portion of Montauk whiting gone chlorophyll inexperienced with seaweed, fabulous with a calming glass of Eva Fricke Riesling from Germany’s Rhinegau, which — I promise — tastes like like salted pineapple kissed by diesel gas. (I additionally promise you need it to.)
Clockwise from top-left: Inside Lei, braised brief rib, the bottle choice, a celtuce snack. Matt Russell.
Clockwise from top-left: Inside Lei, braised brief rib, the bottle choice, a celtuce snack. Matt Russell.
The total bottle listing is complete and creative — together with just a few bottles from Chinese language producers — and in case you stick round lengthy sufficient, Shi and her somms will inevitably come over to blind-taste you on no matter they’ve obtained open. The menu options just a few bigger dishes which are fairly good in themselves, most particularly a Flinstonian hunk of brief rib on the bone, sweetened with strawberry jam. However for now, I’d simply as quickly graze as gorge.
There are entrée-size objects on provide at Cactus Wren, too, a unusual, snacky offshoot of the Decrease East Aspect tasting-menu spot 63 Clinton, which occupies a vibrant, ethereal nook house at Rivington and Ludlow. Pizzas are turned out of a domed, ceramic oven mosaic-tiled within the middle of the room, and I appreciated the grilled pork with shishitos and ajo blanco effectively sufficient. However the snacks, the snacks! Cactus Wren — named for the state chook of Arizona, the place co-owners Samuel Clonts Raymond Trinh met — has the mad-science imaginative and prescient of a Bennigan’s run by Alinea. Seven-layer dip topped with caviar. Wings with jalapeño green-goddess ranch. Miniature shrimp toasts, the scale of thin matchboxes, to be wrapped in lettuce with mango salad. My favourite of all, two little discs of smoked eel tart: bronzy, buttery, sweetly glazed, with minced eel and Gold Rush apple. (They appeared on the invoice, if not on the menu, as “eel tarte tatin.”)
Right here, too, the wine listing is spectacular, ferreting out uncommon bottles from smaller producers. We settled on a Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo, a considering man’s rosé, which, unweighted down by a number of entrées, I had the readability to mirror drinks like melted cherries and smells like smoked meat. This, too, is a praise.
Cactus Wren.
Photograph: Courtesy Evan Sung
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