Food

There comes a moment when the neighborhood bar circuit shorts out. Sure it's fun to meet friends for beer at 1020, but at some point you'll probably find yourself hankering for a change of scenery. What to do? For those of us who aren't natives or hipsters--which is a lot of people, this not being NYU--the prospect of drinking away from home turf can be inimical. After all, who wants to stumble by chance into a sketchy bar and end up on some wharf with a rusty shank wound? Or worse yet, mumble into a speakeasy, pay $20 for a drink, and end up sitting next to a pack of I-bankers?

Luckily, there is a solution: the wine bar. Much-trumpeted in the past couple of years, wine bars generally serve wine by the bottle and glass, often accompanied by simple snacks like sandwiches and cheese plates. Though the feel of bars can range from convivial and chatty to hip and edgy to subdued, they are very rarely intimidating, making them a great way to drink off campus with comfort and class.

Wine bars are socially flexible places, equally good for casual drinks with friends or a light dinner with visiting parents. And in the pending season of romance, you couldn't ask for a better date venue, particularly since anyone with an ounce of imagination, a decent vocabulary, and an equally clueless partner can look like an oenophilic sophisticate: just gaze, swirl, smell, sip, and say something like, "Ah yes, notes of hyacinth and old libraries." It works.