Beyond the pairing

Husband-and-wife team Arjav Ezekiel and Tracy Malechek, owners of the wine-focused Birdie’s in Austin, Texas. 

SEASONAL CHANGE

At Smithereens, co-owner Nikita Malhotra’s entire wine list is an exercise in pairing, though again, not necessarily with dish-by-dish precision in mind. The cozy new East Village restaurant opened in November 2024 with a concept of change – the menu and the wine list will change with the seasons. For the opening chapter, the culinary theme has been New England seafood, and Malhotra’s entire wine list is white wine, mostly classical, off-dry German Riesling. She calls the list “a love story, an homage to the Kabinett style.”

Despite appearances, Malhotra is no classicist. Her personal favorite pairing is cacio e pepe with Daiginjo sake, and she once served Domaine Roulot Clos des Bouchères 2016 in a glass rinsed with Ardbeg (a peaty scotch) alongside a dry-aged steak. As a veteran of the wine-centric Tribeca Grill and former wine director of Michelin two-star Momofuku Ko, Malhotra has represented massive lists and written wine-pairing menus. She likens running an encyclopedic list to curating an art museum (“you need to make sure you have enough ancient Egyptian pieces”). But Smithereens operates more like an art gallery – changing, intimate – which “allows me and the diner to focus a bit more, to pay closer attention to both the food and the wine,” she says.

The German-Riesling-focused list’s goal is not solely to complement the food. It also represents Malhotra’s current, rapt fascination with the winemaking scene in Germany, to which she has traveled and senses great energy and change, things she wants to harness on the list and in the glass, whether or not these notions are obvious. Her wine list – and representing it on the floor each night – connects with and propels this energy. As such, her connections with the place and its winemakers become an aspect of the pairing on her micro-focused list.

And just like an art gallery or a short story – Malhotra is a bibliophile – the menus will change in springtime, when her wine list will examine Grenache grown on sand. Beyond that, who knows?

“I’m interested in exploring so many things,” says Malhotra. Take sake. “There’s not as much tension, which defines how we think in the Western ideas of pairing. But when you open the doors to other cultures, it becomes more nuanced. Texture is important. Or I think about a sense of movement when tasting wine.” One Riesling she describes as a ballerina on the palate, another an F1 racing driver, qualities, “as valid for pairings as our basic notions of acid and tannin,” she says.

Despite evidence otherwise, classical wine pairing menus are not dead. At The Wolf’s Tailor and Brutø, two fine dining establishments from Denver’s Id Est group (as well as at Nonesuch, which the group operates in Oklahoma City), pairings comprise the majority of beverage sales, according to beverage director Caroline Clark. Pairing offerings are multifaceted: there are two wine pairings (regular and high-end) and a mixed beverage pairing that can include cocktails, non-alcoholic drinks, sake, cider, beer, etc.

“For us, it’s kind of a combo approach to pairings that’s exciting,” explains Clark. “We ask ourselves all the time: ‘Who cares about traditional pairings? Does it excite people to sit down and have something they’ve had a million times’?”

Yet, she notes, “there’s so much wisdom in traditional pairing that we’d be fools to completely ignore the tried and true. Plus, we have many kinds of guests. For some, this might be their first time at a Michelin-starred restaurant and they’ve never had the experience of pairings that some of us might consider overplayed.”

Clark remains conscious of how pairing can teach us both about the food and the wine. “In the case of something as common as Chablis with oysters, I remember we paired an older vintage with an odd Japanese preparation with a lot of acidity and seaweed to create an ornate oceanic experience. It truly highlighted the flavor of this ten-year-old Chablis, which tasted exactly as textbook austere, mineral Chablis was supposed to taste and doesn’t often anymore. It actually brought a tear to my eye, because not only is Chablis and oysters a thing for a reason, but it opened up a conversation about climate change and the classic, maybe fading perceptions of a changing world.” Will future generations even know what Chablis and oysters tasted like?

In Clark’s estimation, wine and food pairing, whatever form it takes, is here to stay. “Humans just sometimes don’t want to deal with high-level pairing, and the clear rules make decision-making a little easier. Or we don’t care about making a match at all,” she says. “Both are valid and enjoyable. But the fun is in those moments the match is just so dead on, so perfect. It can be powerful.”

Indeed, in those rare cases, the spark produced by a perfect match – whether planned or discovered by accident – can illuminate a memory of both the food and the wine that lasts a lifetime.

Hey Kiddo — part of the Id Est group portfolio

Top, Caroline Clark, beverage director of The Wolf's Tailor, BRUTØ, BASTA, Hey Kiddo. Bottom, At the cozy East Village Smithereens in New York, the wine list is an exercise in pairing, though not always with dish-by-dish precision in mind