David and Zoe behind BabySips

Welcome back to Savour! For those who are new around here, welcome to our newsletter spotlighting the founders behind some of your favorite restaurants around the city. We’re diving into their passion, creativity, and vision to bring you a “beyond the menu” experience, adding extra flavor to your dinner plans.

Wine tastings always last for hours. For enthusiasts David and Zoe, their key to fully enjoying the experience and making it through the day would be reminding each other to take baby sips. What started as a joke eventually inspired the headline for their new project—BabySips: an all-natural wine bar serving up great bites and beats in the Lower East Side.

David and Zoe met in fine dining at a restaurant called Cosme about seven years ago. They gained experience in both the front and back of house before taking their talents elsewhere—David to Blue Hill in the West Village and Zoe to Place des Fêtes in Clinton Hill, two NYC staples. A few years ago, they regrouped in Spain, where they began harvesting and collaborating with wine makers to make wine themselves. Recently, they decided it was time to open a place of their own.

Food was a central part of Zoe’s upbringing, and she discovered her love for cooking early on. As an only child, her parents took her everywhere they went, traveling often and frequenting great restaurants. For David, his earliest memory of eating out was hearty Southern food at Threadgill’s in Austin, Texas. Eating out was only for special family occasions growing up, and he picked up fine dining on his own later on.

BabySips is owner-operated—Zoe handles the food, David curates the wine. Since there’s no one else, they do all the prepping, buying, cleaning, and servicing. “It’s a lot of time,” David admits. “On the other hand, it is ours, and we get to call the shots. We get to bring on the food [and wine] that we're passionate about.”

We swung by and walked into a full house, with people truly enjoying the experience David and Zoe have crafted. “Baby Sips is such a personal project for us and everything that we're doing really, really comes from the heart,” Zoe adds. Their excitement and love for sharing their handcrafted food and wine is evident, and it’s equally received with just as much enjoyment from the guests. Us included.

Bites to Savour

What are your favorite spots in NYC?

“A place that we love is Mắm - it's a Vietnamese spot on Forsyth. They also own a wine bar called Lai Rai, which is very cool.”

If you could only have one item on the menu what would it be?

David: “I would say because Zoe make the food, she’s biased, but I would say the tuna melt, the baby melts. They’ve really resonated and we've had chef friends and people in the industry that know food and love food mention that the baby melts are special.”

Zoe: “I think they're surprising to a lot of people—they're not what people expect when they think tuna melts…but I think the octopus salad is the one that I have a special place in my heart for.”

What's the best thing that’s happened since opening?

Zoe: “I mean, you know, seeing a packed house and seeing people hanging out waiting to be seated and staying longer than they expected or drinking a couple more glasses of wine than expected. That's really cool. I think also seeing people come back—we have people in the neighborhood come back multiple times a week, and seeing people returning always feels good…

and then those moments where we have gotten really busy and we both just walk in and David's doing his thing and I'm doing my thing and like there's this, this buzz, high energy moment, that feels really good.”

Watch David, Zoe, and BabySips come to life on TikTok & Instagram

Currently walk-in only, BabySips is conveniently located in the Lower East Side close to the F/M/J/Z trains. Join their quickly forming group of regulars at 176 Rivington St. on Wednesdays to Sundays 3pm+, and don’t miss $8 glasses / $30 bottles served until 5pm.

With compliments to the chef,

Jenn

Founder, Shortlist New York