How to Spend a Day Eating & Drinking Wine in the East Village
From a Taiwanese bakery to a pizzeria with one of our favorite wine lists in the city, a guide on how to spend a day with friends.
Written by Spencer Fox
Artwork by Sang Pak
The East Village has such a high concentration of quality bars, restaurants, and everything in between that the odds of a good night are almost always in your favor. With that being the case, the current emphasis on aggregated lists proclaiming to have found the “best,” “hottest,” or “top” spots can feel like a needless exercise in hierarchy. So, we’re not going to do that. Instead, we’ve mapped out a full day of wine and food that feel singular to this neighborhood, all within a ten-minute walk of each other. These are the places we consistently return to again and again, and on a particularly dreary winter day, that’s exactly what we did.
Among these institutions are two bastions of pitch-perfect Taiwanese cuisine, a wine bar with no digital footprint, the smallest yet buzziest addition to one of the city’s most exciting restaurant groups, and the only sourdough pizza joint in the city where you can snag a bottle of Maison Valette for under $100.
If we had to plan a perfect Saturday in the East Village, this would be how we’d spend it. Not because these places are the showiest or most innovative, but because they consistently overdeliver on quality, detail, and intention.
Win Son Bakery
Trigg Brown, Scott Conrad, Stephanie ‘Stephy’ Auquilla
Our first stop was Win Son Bakery, a Taiwanese spot with one of the most affordable wine lists and a menu that rewards both restraint and excess. When we arrived around 1:30 PM, there was already a line out the door. The snow, just starting to fall, had driven people inside and the smell of scallion pancakes on the flat top and chickens in the fryer kept them seated. We were greeted by co-founder Trigg Brown and within seconds found ourselves talking about the explosive, rustic wines of Ca’ De Noci. Naturally, we ordered a bottle of their Tre Dame 2023—a frizzante rosato made from Termarina and Sgavetta, two varieties indigenous to Emilia-Romagna. Deeply mineral and lively, it was a welcome bright spot to such a gray afternoon. Then came the food.
Two overflowing trays landed on the table: jui cai scallion pancake, tofu fan tuan, fried chicken with a sticky glaze, french fries, and a mochi donut. We’d been here countless times, but that first bite of scallion pancake—crisp, chewy, savory—made our knees buckle. This food is really, really good.
Win Son Bakery is the kind of place you go when you want to feel taken care of—where the combination of food, drink, and atmosphere carry you somewhere simpler, kinder, and more delicious than whatever exists on the other side of its doors.
Horse With No Name
It’s hard not to mention Horse With No Name’s strict no-video policy. “No Smoking. No Tik Toks. No Assholes,” as it reads on the front door, is a bold stance given that an influencer-cosign can make or break a business these days. But that all feels beside the point. Why focus on what one can’t do when what one can and will experience inside Horse With No Name is so singular.
We arrived right at opening and were met warmly by the small but mighty staff. We grabbed a four-top at the front of the room and looked out onto the snow falling along 5th Street. Flipping through the wine list, it became clear that two bottles might be necessary to accommodate our growing group—Trigg and his friend had joined us after leaving Win Son.
We went with Jean Maupertuis’ Les Pierres Noires—Gamay d’Auvergne with a touch of the obscure local varietal, Noirfleurien—and CC, a newer cuvée from Patrick Boujou and Justine Loiseau of Domaine La Boheme that blends their estate Chardonnay with Chenin Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc from Anjou and Touraine. The wines were exactly what the afternoon called for: energetic and bright, yet layered with enough texture and dense fruit to combat the chill in the air. Alongside the wine, we grazed on Mountaineer cheese, Comté, and a small dish of cured meats.
As the room filled, the bar settled into itself. Horse With No Name is at its apex when it’s bustling. People filter in and out, conversations buzz over the vinyl playing in the background, and all of a sudden you feel as though you’re part of something, not just another face in the crowd. Whether it's the wine, the charming Western decor, the exceptional hospitality, or confidently knowing that you’ll never have to share the bar with someone filming short form content, Horse With No Name might not be the wine bar that the East Village deserves, but it is certainly the one that it needs.
Ho Foods
Onward we marched up Second Avenue and onto Seventh Street until we arrived at Ho Foods, the East Village’s shrine to Taiwanese homestyle cooking. When it first opened in 2018, it was a small room with just a handful of tables and bar seats. You’d sit shoulder to shoulder with six or so other guests, inhaling bowls of beef noodle soup, plates of cold tofu, and glasses of fresh soy milk, and be out the door in under twenty minutes.
In its current iteration, Ho Foods offers the same fare, energy, and ethos, now with a second dining room and a slightly more relaxed pace. There’s finally space to linger. It’s best known for its beef noodle soup, and rightly so—impossibly tender beef, a lip-coating broth, and perfectly bouncy house-made noodles.
We ordered the lu rou fan (braised pork belly over rice), sesame noodles, marinated cucumbers, and chili wontons, then moved onto wine. Ho’s quietly boasts one of our favorite selections in the city, studded with bottles from the heralded estates of Yvon Metras, Christian Tschida, Sepp & Marie Muster, and Domaine de Chevillard, all priced staggeringly close to retail. How they manage it, we’re not entirely sure, but we pray it never changes.
Richard Ho
We landed on Julien Guillot’s 910 cuvée, a field blend of Chardonnay, Gamay, Pinot Noir, Pinot Fin, and Gamay Petit Grain, made in homage to the Clunisien monks who began cultivating vines at Clos des Vignes du Maynes around 900 AD.
The wine was showing perfectly—lightly candied fruit, a touch savory, and lifted by freshness. As for the food, we’d be hard pressed to think of a single bite that wasn’t noteworthy, but the lu rou fan deserves particular praise. What sets Ho’s version apart is the texture of the pork, which remains toothsome even after its lengthy braise. Elsewhere, the meat is often chopped so fine that it loses any semblance of texture. Here, slightly larger pieces highlight the quality of the meat and give the dish a much appreciated chew.
Stars
Photo credit: Cole Wilson
Prior to this outing, I had never been to Stars, the third venture from Chase Sinzer and Joshua Pinsky, but I had heard about it from just about every industry friend and media outlet—unanimously good things, might I add. About a block or two out, around 7:30 PM with our group back down to four, I couldn’t help but feel a little worried that this outpouring of praise might get in the way of my own subjective experience. Having the quality of a new spot prescribed before actually going yourself can oftentimes muddy the waters, guide your hand, and leave you walking in with your mind already made up.
I can safely say that from the second I stepped past Stars’ massive sheet metal doors and into the snug bar, my mind was set at ease. This isn’t a place people like because it’s chic or trendy to do so, but a place people like because how could you not?
At 450 square feet, Stars is tiny, but through meticulous design and ingenuity, the tight room has been turned into something that feels sprawling.
Everything flows circuitously around a horseshoe-shaped bar, leaving the whole space feeling far larger than it actually is. Those not lucky enough to snag one of the 12 bar stools tuck into dimly lit corners, private dining rooms of their own creation. You’re likely to graze shoulders or bump elbows with that person next to you, but that’s half the fun. Once you lean into the intimacy of it all, Stars starts feeling more like a house party than anything else.
We started with a bottle of Domaine de la Pinte’s Fonteneille Chardonnay 2022—delightfully flinty and bracingly acidic.
Now faced with our sixth bottle of the day, choice paralysis began to kick in. We handed control over to the staff and began two joyous rounds of blind tasting. This quickly became a group activity, as our fellow barmates thrust their empty glasses forward with each new bottle.
First up was zippy and saline but not in a way that pointed towards any one region or grape in particular. Albariño from Rías Baixas? Pfalz Riesling? Grüner? Nope. We were drinking Chiussuma’s Pajarin 2022 Erbaluce from Piedmont. A diabolical blind but a gorgeous bottle nonetheless.
The second blind, provided by Sinzer, poured a deep garnet with aromas of dark berries, ferrous earth, and chocolate. The palate was rich yet chiseled with gorgeous acidity and freshness. Garnacha from Las Pedreras in Sierra de Gredos? We have a winner. The remainder of what we had left from all three bottles were shared with the staff and a few friends we happened to run into.
Lower Manhattan is known for many things, but an excess of square footage has never been one of them. Stars provides a compelling argument in favor of smaller spaces and exemplifies how, so long as you put great wine, hospitality, music, and design at the forefront, a bar can be so much greater than the size of its floor plan.
Ops
Just as we were getting ready to leave Stars, two more friends joined us, and together we made our way toward Second Avenue. The day of drinking and eating was catching up to us, but nothing inspires a second wind quite like Ops.
Ending the night at Ops is a familiar feeling for many in the wine industry. Alongside a steady horde of regulars, on any given evening you’re likely to spot some of the city’s most respected sommeliers and beverage directors splitting a pie and a bottle or two.
The wine list at Ops is an institution in its own right. If you’re looking for old guard-classics or anything over $200, you’ll likely come up short. What you will find is a deep repository of small-scale, low-intervention producers whose wines are thought-provoking and challenge the antiquated conceptions of what separates good wine from great wine.
We arrived a touch early for our 9:30 PM reservation and grabbed seats at the bar while we waited for our table. Earlier that day, Ardèche vigneron Samuel Boulay came up in conversation, and as luck would have it, his 2018 Rappapeo was on the list. Made from 100% Viognier, it was unctuous, layered, and a touch volatile—just perfect. Within fifteen minutes, we were pouring out the last of the bottle to share with our bartender.
Once seated, we ordered a roundup of Ops’ greatest hits: the Ops salad, a Hawaiian tavern pie, a classic margherita, and the calzone. It was a pretty conservative order for six grown adults, but it felt appropriate after eight hours of unadulterated gluttony. The Hawaiian pie was impossibly thin yet deeply satisfying; the salad, an ideal reprieve from the onslaught of meat, grease, and cheese; the margherita, was a really, really good margherita; and the calzone did what it always does and stopped us dead in our tracks.
To wash down the final bites of the night, we ordered a bottle of Krill 2023 from Dorsal Wines, a co-ferment of Chardonnay and Merlot from Mendocino-based winemaker, Devin Alexander Myers. It was fresh, steely, briny, and the perfect wine to toast the final chapter of our wintry bacchanal.
There were plans to end the night with a pint of Guinness, perhaps at Swift Hibernian Lounge, and as idyllic as that might have been, it wasn’t in the cards. We were tired. We were full. But not too tired or too full for a little bit of desert. So, the six of us split a panna cotta, had some espressos, and giddily recapped the day.
Did we overdo it by several bottles and a few thousand calories? Almost certainly. Was it all worth it, in spite of the indigestion and potential hangovers that awaited us in the morning? Without question.
Regardless of how you plan your own East Village outings, we implore you to reacquaint yourself with just how indelible this neighborhood is to greater Manhattan. It’s seen some tectonic changes over the past decade, some good and some tragic, but within this half-mile stretch exists a collection of landmarks, institutions, and oddities that reaffirm our belief that there is nowhere on earth quite like New York City.