Upper West Side Wine Bars

Italian

475 Columbus Ave., 10024
Cross Streets: 82nd & 83rd St.
212-362-5454

Hours: Mon-Thu 7:30am-11pm Fri 7:30am-1am Sat 8am-1am Sun 8am-11am

Modeled after the Italian café and wine bar, this chainlet has two downtown locations, this outlet will serve a counter-service breakfast in the morning (as usual, all baked goods will be made from scratch, on location), lunch, and weekend brunch. In the evenings, it will become a wine bar offering a small-plates menu.

The wine list (featuring 25 varieties by the glass) will boast mostly small producers, hopefully like it’s sisters, offering largely muscular choices from Italy and Spain – including a sparkling red Lambrusco.  Luckily they’ll be using a “Vinify” system that keeps the oxygen from filtrating the wine bottles which will keep them fresh longer.

Most should be paired with something off the the menu of assaggi (Italian tapas, essentially) such as a panini, cheese plate or heavier fares such asbaked polenta with duck sauce, hazelnut-crusted monkfish with eggplant, and grilled octopus with borlotti beans and crispy leeks. Along with the namesake vino and tarallucci (the savory semolina cookies that accompany wine) you can sample an iced espresso vigorously shaken in authentic Italian fashion or a rich hot chocolate.

The space has an open twenty-seat room (with an additional fourteen seats around the bar).