October List: Where to Eat & Drink in NYC

Yesterday we kicked off our recommender series with the places you just have to go this weekend for dancing and live music. Today, we’re sharing a handful of the restaurants and wine bars that make this city to special.

Really Good Dinner

The Four Horsemen 

Williamsburg · $$$ · New American / Californian + wine

The obvious one, but obvious for a reason. Tiny, warm, perpetually cool without behaving like it knows it, with a constantly changing seasonal menu and a wine list you can happily surrender control of to the staff. Michelin currently puts it at the $$$$ end, so this is the splurge of the group.

Visit Website

Theodora

Fort Greene · $$$ · Mediterranean / seafood

Dark, smoky, and date-night sexy. The kitchen revolves around dry-aged fish, charcoal, and an open mangal grill, so things arrive blistered, smoky, and meant to be passed around. The sort of dinner that starts with “one drink after?” and ends several hours later.

Visit Website

Hart's

Bed-Stuy · $$ · Mediterranean / seasonal

The neighborhood option, in the best sense: small, intimate, and unfussy, with Mediterranean-leaning cooking and the feeling that everyone else in the room somehow lives six blocks away. Less spectacle than some of these, more I know a place.

Visit Website

La Vara

Cobble Hill ·$ · Spanish / Moorish / Sephardic

Spanish food that remembers Spain spent centuries absorbing ideas from everywhere around it. Moorish and Sephardic influences run through the menu alongside Basque and Andalusian ones; order a table full of things, drink wine, fight politely over the last bite.

Visit Website

Oxomoco 

Greenpoint · $$$ · Mexican / wood-fired

Mexican cooking through fire, smoke, and a very good bar program. The current menu moves from heirloom-corn tostadas and guacamole into more substantial dishes, with plenty of agave on hand. Polished enough for a date, lively enough that it doesn't feel like you're eating dinner in a library.

Visit Website

Otis

Bushwick · $ · New American

A proper dinner before disappearing further into Bushwick. The menu currently jumps from burrata and mussels to branzino, lamb meatballs, braised-pork pasta, and ribeye, with cocktails to keep the table occupied between courses. Comfortable, dim, and sexy without requiring anyone to whisper.

Visit Website

Wine Bars

Stars

East Village · $$$ · Wine bar

Twelve seats wrapped around a zinc bar, walk-ins only. It has the intimacy of accidentally ending up at somebody’s very good dinner party, except there are more than 1,000 bottles of wine and somebody actually knows which one you should drink. Small, handsome, and appropriately difficult to get into.

Visit Website

Colbo Next Door

Chinatown · $$$ · Natural wine / listening bar

Part wine bar, part fashion shop, part excuse to sit around listening to records while drinking something slightly strange. The room is dark, stylish, and full of vinyl, with the kind of downtown crowd that makes getting dressed for a glass of wine feel reasonable.

Visit Website

BabySips 

Lower East Side · $ · Natural wine

Tiny, walk-in-only, and much more interested in bottles than wine-bar theater. The draw is a constantly changing selection and a room small enough that asking what you should drink actually turns into a conversation. Come curious rather than pretending you understand volatile acidity.

Visit Website

Rhodora Wine Bar

Fort Greene · $ · Natural wine

The neighborhood wine bar done properly: big windows, wood, good bottles, and none of the solemn little rituals that can make natural wine feel like graduate school. It’s also genuinely zero-waste and carbon-neutral rather than simply owning a lot of plants and calling that sustainability.

Visit Website

Quality, Tested CBD – and Why It Matters

When you’re ready to try CBD, it’s important to trust that the product matches the label. Independent lab testing verifies the ingredients and screens for contaminants. While some companies cut corners here, CBDistillery tests every batch and posts the results online.

Save 50% on orders $75+ with code NEWS50!

Get Tested & Trusted CBD