Say Good-bye to Gem Wine

When we last caught up with Flynn McGarry in November, Gem Home had just opened on Mott Street. It’s a café in the back, where one can nosh on focaccia sandwiches and pastries at communal candlelit tables, and fine grocer in the front, sprinkled with McGarry’s vintage sundry selections. At the time, McGarry emphasized it was “not a restaurant,” but when its lease runs out at the end of the month, Gem Wine will now be closing. The nighttime wine and food will move over to Gem Home, which will have a harder time fighting off the “restaurant” allegations when it opens for dinner service on April 3.

“It’s becoming incredibly difficult to create this line between restaurant, wine bar, café, whatever. And I think that has sort of happened with Gem Wine,” says McGarry. “Gem Wine was never supposed to exist without Gem.” As Gem Wine expanded to accommodate requests for more food while still calling itself a wine bar, customers would treat it as both somewhere to chat with some friends over a bottle and a place for a romantic dinner date. Behind the scenes, it was tough to be two things at once; on a recent night, McGarry was in the kitchen sending out full meals to three tables, while everyone else got snacks.

Defining the line between restaurant and café has become more urgent, with Cove, McGarry’s new restaurant, set to open this fall in Hudson Square. Whereas the Gem umbrella of restaurants has always occupied cozy, charming spaces around the Lower East Side, Cove will be bigger and more ambitious than anything McGarry has done before. “We have a 15-year lease, and we’re building it once,” McGarry says. He’s looking forward to two different spaces that will offer two distinct experiences: “In the summer, when I get tomatoes, there’s two ways I want to eat them. It’s either just sliced on a plate or as a composed dish,” he explains. “I don’t need two restaurants in downtown New York that serve the same thing.”

As for the business that’s closing: Gem’s wine cellar, which has been the domain of McGarry’s sister Paris since the original Gem opened, will be split up between the restaurants accordingly, with special bottles to accompany dining going to Cove and by-the-pour-friendly picks going to Gem Home.

Before Gem Wine shutters forever, they’ll say farewell with a weeklong bash of special guests “cooking dishes that they think are their real version of wine bar,” McGarry says. “It really is a way for everyone to feel out what they’ve maybe been missing in wine bars lately.”

Festivities start on Tuesday, March 25, with Marc-Olivier Frappier and Jessica Noël from Mon Lapin in Montreal, who will supply their cured meats and some special wines. The next day, chef Macklin Casnoff from L.A. will bring fresh produce and finger sandwiches. Thursday belongs to Eli Zabar, who will serve some wines from his decades-old collection. To finish on Friday, wine importer Zev Rovine, (“Part of the reason wine bars exist in New York,” says McGarry) will bring the bottles while the menu is in the hands of Serbian restaurant Kafana, though it will probably bring some wine, too.