Search Results for: Allen Yin

If Sung Park wasn’t a chef, he would make a wonderful guru. He has charisma, speaks about food and life with unbridled passion, and dispenses his opinions on culinary matters with authority and certainty. Sung owns Bistro Petit, a little French place on South 3rd Street and Driggs Avenue. “It was supposed to be a take-out restaurant for French food, but everybody wants to eat in,” he says.

The charming joint with the hand-painted blue-and white tiles and the flirty French striped awning was designed by his girlfriend, an interior designer. It has a serious kitchen, which takes up two-thirds of the space, with only a few feet left for three short counters and ten backless stools. It’s a tight squeeze. Yet people insist on hanging out, they want to eat their gourmet meals right there and quiz the chef on the ingredients and his cooking techniques.

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My first encounter with natural wine was not a happy one. It was about ten years ago, when one of my colleagues finally saved enough money to buy a house in New Jersey. Having grown up in cramped apartments all over Manhattan, he was now giddy with extra real estate. He had a decent sized bucolic backyard, and a cool and damp basement, so decided to pursue a hobby befitting a country gentleman—the art of wine making.

We heard about his progress throughout that year: “I found a book on making natural wine… I ordered a personal-sized oak barrel from California… I started the fermentation process… I’m aging the bottles on an Ikea rack….” One day, a bottle mysteriously appeared on my desk. It had edgy kidnapper-style black and bold lettering on rustic brown craft paper. The cork was dutifully sealed with a wad of drippy red wax. I was so excited. I couldn’t wait to try it with dinner.

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