At a recent dinner at on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, my table was filled with raw scallops on crisp cabbage leaves, a griddled lobster-chanterelle sandwich, mackerel slivers on warm toasts, and smashed and fried lion’s-mane schnitzel. The small plates added up to a decent meal—and the kind of hefty bill that I’ve come to expect at a certain kind of beverage-focused not-quite restaurant: Including a dainty quenelle of corn ice cream and a bottle of Savagnin, I dropped close to $400. But a 20-something in a Waffle House hoodie can just as easily leave the restaurant with a $28 tab.
According to chef and owner , Gem Wine is an “in-between restaurant,” an acquiescence to the current mood for choose-your-own-adventure dining. “Guests have the option to not look at us as a restaurant,” he says. Not too long ago, at the same address, McGarry served 12-course tasting menus priced at $155—that is, before he temporarily closed Gem and transformed it into its current wine-bar iteration.
Nearby, occupies real estate that once housed , from Jeremiah Stone and Fabián von Hauske Valtierra, whose $180 tasting menus have been dispensed with in favor of stuffed chicken wings and modernist cocktails from Dave Arnold. In Philadelphia, tasting-menu eatery Laurel is now wine bar , while Chicago’s Esmé developed an easier-going restaurant-within-a-restaurant, . In New Orleans, the renovation of Emeril’s came with a sister wine bar.
Back in New York, dropped the dress code.
