In the modern wine world, Asian cuisine is still too often paired with a single default: Riesling. The assumption goes that all Asian food is spicy, and therefore only an off-dry Riesling can handle its bold flavors. This approach ignores the nuances and diversity found in dishes that vary greatly by nation and region. Most diners also don’t consider wine when eating at a Chinese or Thai restaurant, choosing beer or cocktails instead.
But there’s a new wave of wine bars in New York City challenging this notion, serving a spectrum of wines with distinct regional cuisine. At spots like the newly opened Lei in Chinatown, guests can enjoy a rare Burgundy with a sweet and sour beef short rib or a Malagousia from Greece paired with Lady Edison Jinhua ham and Asian pears. “It’s important for us to show wine can taste just as good with Chinese food as it does with French or Italian food,” Lei’s owner Annie Shi says. “It’s not revolutionary, but people don’t think of it as often as they think of beer or sake — and it doesn’t just have to be Riesling and Gewürztraminer.”
For wine drinkers who love Champagne; salty, crisp white wines; or juicy reds, there’s a whole new set of pairings to explore. Here’s how wine pros are building their lists at these pioneering NYC bars.
Lei
Though wine and Chinese food isn’t the most conventional pairing, Chinatown has long been a haven for the city’s oenophiles. Go-to BYOB spots like House of Joy, Peking Duck House, and Wu’s Wonton King are industry icons, giving wine pros a place to bring (basically) unlimited bottles to dinner. Many spend late nights admiring their selections on rotating lazy Susans, alongside plates of glistening Peking duck, baskets of dim sum, and overflowing bowls of noodles.
Though these institutions are bedrocks of NYC’s wine scene, Annie Shi — partner in popular restaurants King and Jupiter, and owner of the newly opened Lei — felt something was still missing.
“I think the origin of Lei comes from a personal and selfish place. This is the place I’ve wanted to go to that I couldn’t find in NYC,” she says. “Every year on my birthday I want to eat really great Chinese food and drink really great wines. I just wanted something that was considered not just a BYOB or corkage, but a full experience.”
That became the core premise of Lei: a highly curated wine bar with meticulous details stretching all the way to the lime-green Sabre chopsticks that match the bar’s electric logo.
For the wine list, Shi sought balance between the blue chip wines and unicorn bottles that excite aficionados — “kind of a given in New York,” she says — along with a strong selection under $100. “We wanted to encourage people who may love wine but have only ever paid attention to the by-the-glass list to order a bottle instead,” she says.
For the more approachable wines, Shi selects crisp and aromatic white wines from Greece, and complex, savory whites from under-the-radar regions like Petit Manseng from Jurançon.
Another novel aspect of Lei that benefits both beginners and seasoned pros: All the servers are sommeliers. Shi says wine was always central to the bar’s ethos, with the food and service both designed around the wine program. That way anyone stopping by a table can guide guests through the list, making Lei one of the easiest and most enjoyable places to order wine in the city right now.
Sunn’s
After a decade of building a following through creative banchan pop-ups, chef Sunny Lee opened her first brick-and-mortar location in 2024. Teaming up with Grant Reynolds and the Parcelle team, Lee debuted Sunn’s in Dimes Square last December, filling the 24-seat space with vibrant banchan and a compact but compelling wine cellar.
In Korean cuisine, banchan are small dishes served with rice to brighten the meal. At Sunn’s, chef Lee flips that tradition: The “Banchan of the Day” — six curated small dishes — forms the centerpiece. Plates might include Napa cabbage kimchi, creamy potato salad, garlicky cucumber muchim, smoky eggplant namul, or bouncy acorn jelly.
With such a range of flavors and textures, wine director Dora Grossman-Weir (who also oversees the lists at Parcelle’s other restaurant partners Tolo and Mitsuru) designed a list built on versatility.
“A bottle of wine is something that rides alongside you during your meal, something you experience with every dish,” Grossman-Weir says. “So we want wines that can be flexible — wines that will be a constant source of refreshment and newness.”
For Grossman-Weir, that means low-alcohol, high-acid wines with savory, salty, or herbaceous character to match the food’s umami flavors. She highlights Domaine des Ardoisières Cuvée Silice Blanc, a 100 percent Jacquère from France’s Alpine Savoie region, as a sub-$100 favorite. “It’s 10.5 percent alcohol, bright, citrusy, and has that slightly waxy texture on the palate,” Grossman-Weir says. “It’s great with the lighter dishes, but has a bit of structure and creaminess that can cut through fat of some of the larger plates like the soy caramelized beef brisket.”
On the splurge-ier end, she points to Tiberio ‘Fonte Canale’ Trebbiano d’Abruzzo. “It’s the most salty, textured, quintessential Italian white,” Grossman-Weir says. “It offers so much herbaceousness that matches the fresh herbs and spices in Sunny’s food.”
Tolo
Though not exactly a wine bar, Tolo is a Chinese restaurant with a heavy-hitting wine program. Chef-owner Ron Yan, who was born in mainland China but spent time living in Canada, Hong Kong, Texas, and New York, opened the spot to cook the Chinese food that he craves, filtered through his international experience. The menu runs from small bites like salt-and-pepper tofu and chewy little rice noodles with XO sauce to larger dishes such as duck leg confit with zhajiang noodles and a high-end take on “beef and broccoli.”
Another vertex of the Parcelle restaurant triangle, Tolo sits just down the street from Sunn’s. The two share a cellar, with Grossman-Weir overseeing both lists, but each takes its own approach. Where Sunn’s emphasizes freshness and versatility, Tolo’s leans classic, with Burgundy at the center.
“Tolo opened with something to prove a little bit,” Grossman-Weir says. “We want you to not think twice about drinking classic wines with a cuisine that’s not European. We want people to drink Burgundy, and trust that we have flavors that will go well.”
Instead of defaulting to expectations, Yan and Grossman-Weir set out to show that the world’s great wines can shine alongside sweet and sour crispy fish or crab and gai lan fried rice.
“People assume they will drink Riesling at Tolo, but that’s presumptuous,” Grossman-Weir says. “In the dishes and cuisines we’re working with, there’s not that much chili heat or spice — there’s a lot more tang, acid, sweetness, umami,” She recommends Champagne or Chenin Blanc with snacks and starters, but for the full Tolo experience, she nudges guests toward the fine and rare bottles.
“We will always point people to red Burgundy, and specifically a region like Savigny-lès-Beaune that offers pretty floral flavors while remaining savory,” she says. “I also love pushing people toward the Rhône. We have a bottle of 2001 Crozes-Hermitage on the list right now: dark olive-y, peppery, that does so well with the sweetness in duck breast or the beef and broccoli in Ron’s char siu sauce. That combo is really killer.”
Lai Rai
The most experimental of the four, Lai Rai serves wine with Vietnamese-inspired scoops of ice cream. From the teams behind NYC favorites Mắm and Di an Di, the bar uses ice cream as a canvas to expand pairing possibilities. Flavors include fish sauce caramel, chrysanthemum, banana leaf, and Vietnamese coffee.
Alongside these bold creations, Lai Rai showcases wines that also defy convention. The list includes natural wines sourced from as far afield as China and as close as the Finger Lakes, as well as specialty rice wines from Korea and Vietnam.
Manager and bartender Joyce Tang notes that the fish sauce caramel ice cream is the most popular flavor, and she often pairs it with Sông Cái Kha — a Vietnamese fermented rice wine aged solera-style for 18 months in oak and terracotta amphorae. The wine’s savory, nutty depth plays surprisingly well with the ice cream’s sweetness and texture.
If Lei can pour Burgundy with sweet-and-sour short rib, if Sunn’s can ride Alpine whites alongside six different plates of banchan, if Tolo can make red Burgundy feel right at home with beef and broccoli, and if Lai Rai can pair rice wine with fish sauce caramel ice cream — then it’s time to retire the old notion that Riesling is the only answer. These bars prove wine belongs at the table with Asian cuisine, in all its nuance and variety.
