When the VinePair team isn’t busy working at HQ, we’re in the field doing what we do best: scoping out the best cocktails, wine, and beer in the five boroughs. Here are the cool, current, and flat-out excellent drinks you should try in New York right now, according to our editors.
Despite our pleas, the almighty groundhog charged us with six more weeks of winter this year. But that isn’t stopping the VinePair team from getting out and exploring New York City’s latest openings after a long, long January.
Even though it’s just the beginning of the year, there are already so many new spaces to check out. And we’ve tried them all — from buzzy pop-ups-turned-restaurants to two of the city’s most highly anticipated new cocktail bars. On the beer front, craft breweries and bars impressed us with their frothy pours and bold flavors that are well worth a visit, too.
Here are the best things to drink in NYC this February, according to our editors.
Highballs at Kiko
When dining out in the depths of winter, an often unspoken — yet wildly important — factor in choosing a restaurant is its warmth. And none can match the immediately warming entrance of Kiko, a new restaurant in Hudson Square that greets diners with a crackling fireplace, comfy couches, and soft lighting. Once you’ve defrosted and are seated at one of the dining room’s grand (and well-spaced) wooden tables, treat yourself to one of the culinary-minded cocktails that feature savory, Asian-inspired ingredients, including a number of refreshing but complex highballs. Our favorite was the Nashi Highball, made with Japanese whisky, sherry, ginger, and pear cider. The energetic carbonation and subtle savory flavors make it a great match for dishes like the Maine lobster crispy rice with Thai chili and red curry. Kiko also offers an Ume Highball with vodka, umeshu, shiso, and green tea, as well as a spirit-free Hojicha Highball.
A Glass of Bubbles (and a Bottle of Gamay) at Ha’s Snack Bar
Sadie Mae Burns and Anthony Ha, the partners behind Ha’s Đặc Biệt, the Vietnamese pop-up with a cult following, finally opened their first permanent restaurant in January. Ha’s Snack Bar is located in the extremely narrow yet inviting space that used to house Gem Wine on the Lower East Side. The French-Vietnamese menu includes small bites like chicken liver pate on toast and snails sizzling in garlic and tamarind butter as well as large plates like a skate wing with ginger nuoc mam or a towering vol au vent of curried lamb. The wine list features a curated selection from France and Italy, all listed by name, excluding the mysterious “glass of bubbles” at the top. Order this and you might be surprised with a delightfully aromatic sparkling Garganega from Italy, a sparkling wine the couple served at their wedding. And if you’re staying for more than just snacks, cozy up with a juicy bottle of Gamay from JC Garnier in the Loire Valley.
Skin-Contact Wine at Sunn’s
Another beloved pop-up-turned-restaurant on the Lower East Side, Sunn’s is a Korean wine bar from chef Sunny Lee. Here, banchan are the stars. The menu offers a rotating selection of classics like Napa cabbage kimchi, marinated seaweed and chrysanthemum, acorn jelly, and spicy cucumber muchim served with a side of rice. Though small, these dishes pack a lot of flavor, and the light-bodied, aromatic skin-contact wines on offer are the perfect match. The Domaine Danjou-Banessy ‘Supernova’ is made with the intensely perfumed Muscat of Alexandria grape in France’s Roussillon region. The strong aromatics of jasmine tea, citrus, and apricot stand up to the strong flavors of the food, and at just 9.5 percent ABV, it plays nicely with the banchan’s spice.
Cocktails at Clemente Bar
There’s no standard Martini or Manhattan at Clemente Bar, the new and extremely buzzy cocktail lounge from the team behind Eleven Madison Park, and that’s kind of the whole point. Each creation — from a koji-spiked take on an Espresso Martini to a Ramos-like fizz made with mezcal, banana, matcha, and coconut — is as delicious as it is unexpected. (We know because we’ve had many of them.) One standout is the Negroni Colada. Inspired by the flavors of its namesake drinks, it’s unlike any Negroni or Piña Colada you’ve encountered before. A clarified mix of coconut rum, bitter bianco, blanc vermouth, and pineapple, it arrives crystal clear with a frozen disc of Campari perched atop its ice cube, to melt down slowly into a drink that’s at once bitter, sweet, and vaguely tropical.
Side-Pull Pours at Wild East Brewing
If you’ve never had a Czech lager poured from a side-pull faucet, you’re missing out. At the Wild East Brewing Company taproom in Brooklyn (one of the best breweries in the country right now, ahem), the Czech-style pilsner, Patience & Fortitude, is poured from a Lukr Faucet and arrives with a thick, fluffy head of aromatic foam. Along with the Czech-style wheat lager Mischief & Mayhem, also from a Lukr, it’s definitely one to try among their many great beers. (The 3.5 percent ABV nitro dark mild, Temperance, is another favorite.)
Schmuck Martini at schmuck.
Amid a wave of high-profile bar openings, arguably the most-anticipated welcomed its first guests during the final week of January. Helmed by internationally acclaimed bartenders Juliette Larrouy and Moe Aljaff, schmuck. is the culmination of the duo’s personal and professional lives growing up in and working across Europe, with a focus on food-inspired and ingredient-driven cocktails. Among the highlights: Bread With Tomatoes, a clean and refreshing highball that more than delivers on the promise of its name; and Fika, an Old Fashioned-style cocktail that captures the Swedish tradition of taking a break to snack on a pastry while drinking a hot beverage. Of course, the best way to kick things off always involves a Martini, and during the bar’s first Friday service we enjoyed a wet-ish house mix of Fords Dry Gin and Dolin Dry and Blanc vermouths. A DIY lemon oil garnish accompanied the cocktail in a dropper bottle, while a mid-cocktail glass swap kept things icy cold. We’ve since learned that the bar has updated the spec, adding shochu and Blanche de Normandie (unaged apple brandy) to the equation, along with a marinated olive garnish — which is to say, we’ll be back!
Coffee Stouts at Covenhoven
Although craft beer bars may be a slowly dying breed in the modern metropolitan landscape, it’s nice to see that some institutions have managed to navigate the rough seas and perpetuate excitement around craft beer in 2025. Brooklyn’s Covenhoven is, without a doubt, one of those spots. On top of DIY charcuterie boards and a wall of fridges packed with fresh beers to-go, the bar offers 16 rotating taps all pouring some of the best suds from across the nation. Speaking of which, on a recent evening visit, we got to taste a pour of Fox Farm Brewery’s Ashlawn coffee stout. While the beer has a surprisingly crushable profile, it doesn’t skimp on decadence. The nose kicks off with freshly pulled espresso and malted milk balls before giving way to undertones of licorice, cedar ash, and raspberries as it warms. Each sip delivers a mouthful of mocha flavor punctuated by a light hoppy bitterness that reels you back in for another swig.
