on grand street

a wine bar called creston opened recently on grand street, a block i passed every day when i was in new york. it felt out of place—wedged between the smell of vegetables on one side and a bakery and fishmonger on the other.

on a normal weekday night, i saw there was only one person at the counter, and i went in hoping to strike up a conversation with the owner.

i wanted a glass of red to balance the chill evening, but the tasting on japanese wine caught my attention. the owner explained that both wines were made from koshu, a native japanese grape—one produced in japan, the other in napa by a japanese winemaker. light-bodied, low alcohol. the other customer said he had tried them already. out of curiosity, i ordered the tasting.

the wines were indeed light, almost delicate, with a slight zest when served very cold. as i drank, i asked the owner why he chose this location.

he chuckled. everyone asked the same thing. the bar didn’t belong among the stalls and shops on the street. i teased him that he might be the first one to gentrify this block and told him i grew up nearby, went to middle school the next block. he shrugged. the location didn’t matter to him; the size did. he had spent years working as a wine buyer and was finally looking for a place of his own.

he introduced me to the other customer—a whiskey bar owner from the neighborhood. japanese as well. they spoke in japanese, then the owner translated back to me in english. the whiskey bar owner pointed out that i had come in asking for red and ended up drinking white. i said i drank beer, wine, and whiskey, depending on the weather and the moment. the owner agreed. wine, he said, was best when it matched the occasion—and the company.

the whiskey bar owner looked like he belonged to a different decade: floral scarf tied neatly at the collar of a chambray shirt, thick black frames, a careful haircut. on this particular night, his wife was working, and expecting to give birth in the next day or two. maybe this was his last quiet drink alone. not long into our conversation, he got a phone call, and rushed out of the bar.

after he left, an american woman came in and settled at the far end with a carafe of white. we talked across four empty bar stools. she had walked by the bar too many times and tonight finally decided to stop in. she worked an early shift the next morning at her own beer bar nearby. we talked about the two small restaurants next to her place, and she convinced both the owner and me to try her favorite vietnamese spot around the corner. 

i marked down the whiskey bar and the vietnamese restaurants on my google map. 

copper & oak whiskey bar on allen st.