Lai Rai
Wine bar · Chinatown
76 Forsyth St, New York, NY 10002
Highlights
Lai Rai is a cozy, Vietnamese-inspired wine bar in Chinatown, serving up natural wines alongside inventive ice creams like banana leaf and bold snacks.
Lai Rai is a cozy, Vietnamese-inspired wine bar in Chinatown, serving up natural wines alongside inventive ice creams like banana leaf and bold snacks.
"Lai Rai is putting a Vietnamese spin on the micro trend of wine-and-ice cream bars. The flavors are constantly rotating but, on a recent visit, they included flavors like banana leaf, fish sauce caramel, and avocado. The wine list is diverse, with bottles produced everywhere from Italy to Spain to Virginia."
"If you head to Lai Rai in Chinatown for a drink, you should also do snacks and dessert. The tiny natural wine bar—a collaboration between Mắm down the road and Đi Ăn Đi—serves up oysters on ice and a few excellent little Vietnamese snacks, like headcheese that's as marbled as the bar it’s served on. And they also do ice cream. (Shoutout to Folderol.) The flavors change, but a good rule of thumb is just to order one of every scoop, especially if banana leaf is involved." - willa moore, molly fitzpatrick, sonal shah
"A Vietnamese-inspired wine bar offering unique dishes like head cheese and savory ice cream flavors, blending traditional Vietnamese flavors with modern wine pairings." - Bettina Makalintal
"The intersection of natural wine and ice cream isn’t exactly a popular place to park a bar (though we loved the now-closed Bad Habit). But Lai Rai, which is partly inspired by Parisian wine and ice cream shop Folderol, pairs wine buckets with metal coupes of ice creams and sorbets on top of its wide, black-and-white swirl marble bar. You’ll find an approachable one-page selection of glasses and bottles, mostly French and Italian, as well as a few fantastic frozen desserts in tropical flavors: creamy avocado and toasty banana leaf ice creams, and a deliciously grassy, citrusy ambarella sorbet. Lai Rai is a collaboration between Mắm down the block and Greenpoint restaurant Đi Ăn Đi, and they’ve got some great Vietnamese-ish snacks too, like head cheese studded with peppercorns and cartilage." - bryan kim, will hartman, willa moore, neha talreja, molly fitzpatrick, sonal shah
"Two of our favorite Vietnamese restaurants, Di An Di and Mắm have teamed up to open a tiny wine bar on the Lower East Side. They’re in soft open mode with limited hours until Labor Day, but you can swing by for some natural wine and Vietnamese drinking snacks." - will hartman
