But when Sunday rolled around, we had time to take a breath. Although we wanted to sleep in, we were promised a food tour of the Lower East Side, once the world's largest Jewish neighborhood community. One of its denizens (actually a junior wine sister who is an art student at Parson’s School of Design and lives with her art school roommates in a “colorful” apartment on Henry Street) promised to show us her favorite places in exchange for a bagel breakfast and shopping in Soho. Who could resist—even if it was a 9:30 wake-up call.

Our tour began with lox and bagels. Destination: Russ & Daughters, a Lower East Side institution. This is a tiny shop, but if you have a craving for real New York bagels and super-excellent Nova, you’ve come to the right place. An amazing selection of schmears (we picked traditional, goat cheese and a fantastic Veggie Tofu spread) and smoked salmon of many varieties.  The dill-cured Gravlax was enticing, but we had to go for the traditional, beautiful Nova, hand-sliced. 

In addition to lox and bagels, there were latkes, herring like no other, smoked fish, caviar, dried fruits, specialty chocolates and candies of all varieties. (That’s a three-course meal, right?) We picked up a dozen bagels with some expertly sliced Nova, some fresh-squeezed OJ for re-hydration, and headed south to The Pickle Guys for accoutrements.

The Pickle Guys have an even tinier store front. The shop basically consists of a bunch of pickle barrels. And yes, they sell pickles—half sour, medium sour, really sour depending on how long the cukes have sat in the brine. But they also sell an amazing variety of other pickled veggies, including okra, giardiniera, tomatillos, sauerkraut, mushrooms and more. We spied a barrel of pink-colored things and asked what they were. Pickled turnips. Having never tasted these, we ordered up a half-pint along with a quart of medium-sour pickles.

On to the famous Donut Plant, where the homemade cake or raised donuts, some filled with house-made jam, are made on the premises. When the donuts are gone, the shop closes. By the time we got there, the Crème Brulee donuts were sold out, but we settled for a raspberry-jam-filled raised glaze to be eaten as an appetizer as we walked to art student’s apartment to set out our bagel spread.

The obvious wine pairing for a bagel brunch is Mimosas made with fresh-squeezed OJ. We didn’t have any Champagne (New York is rough like that at 9:30 on a Sunday morning) but If we had to pick a Wine Sisterhood wine, we’d go for a light, fresh white such as Middle Sister Drama Queen Pinot Grigio or PromisQous White. 

After unlocking a front door, a vestibule door, plus the door to the apartment, we set out bagels, lox and cream cheese for the art kids in their glamorous apartment dining room slash living room slash kitchen. Along with the pickles and the amazing pickled pink turnips for a savory accompaniment, it was a genuine NYC LES spread. 

 Next, we set off west to Chinatown. The Art Student wanted to take me to Quickly, a famousJapanese Asian Fusion cafe franchise featuring an exotic drink called milk tea.

What makes Milk Tea different?  YIt's has balls.  Yes, balls of tapioca. A drink you can chew, and we're not talking chewy tannins.  Milk Tea is odd, but interesting. But odd. The drinks are hermetically seal ed with a super-clever machine-foiler-cup capper.  Then you get an extra-big straw to punch through the lid so you can suck up the tapioca balls along with the tea. O.K. where's my Mimosa?

Next, we stopped at a Chinatown bakery. The shelves were stocked with very colorful cakes, big bags of buns and savory pastries as well. No idea what’s inside the cakes, or what the icing says, but many, many points for presentation.

We walked past open bins of exotic ingredients such as dried shrimp—used in many Asian recipes (Pad Thai, anybody?) At the Wine Sisterhood, we love to cook, but we would definitely need a chef well-versed in Asian cuisine to explain to us what all these ingredients were and how the heck to use them in a recipe.

Here’s a wine pairing note for Asian cuisine. Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Indonesian and other eastern cultures do not have a wine tradition as Westerners know it. This part of the world simply does not have the climate for cultivating vitis vinifera. Although wine is made, it’s most notably from rice or perhaps plum and other fruits. Yeah, alcohol is awesome. You can make it from just about anything. Since Asian cuisine has become so mainstream in America, we still want to enjoy a glass of grape-based wine as we know it with Asian foods. 

Oak, tannin and alcohol, which tend to be prominent in red wines, will fight the flavors. Think refreshing sparkling, white or blush (rosé) wines, which are fresher, crisper and lower in alcohol. They will complement both the lighter taste and texture of many subtle vegetable-based Asian dishes as well as the hotter, spicier flavors often found in Asian cuisine. Light whites also pair with tastes in Mexican, Caribbean, Central and South American dishes which feature chilies and assertive spices. 

Riesling is always a sommelier go-to recommendation for Asian cuisine. We think our new White Haute Riesling fits the bill and it’s got a cute green shoe on the label. It’s not bone dry—it has a hint of sweetness (technically--“residual sugar”-- the natural grape sugar left in the wine when all the fruit sugar in the grapes is not converted to alcohol blah blah blah). The hint of sweetness becomes seemless and invisible when paired with hot and spicy foods.

Very lightly oaked or unoaked, steel-fermented whites (meaning they are neither fermented nor aged in oak barrels which gives a toasty taste to the wine) such as or Middle Sister Smarty Pants Chardonnay or Middle Sister Wicked White (Chenin Blanc, Chardonnay and Gewürztraminer),  will also go well. For Asian dishes which feature lamb, pork or beef, you can go with a lighter red with just a hint of toasty oak such as PromisQous Red (a Zin based blend) or Red Haute Pinot Noir. Save your big Cabs and Zins for steak.

After a hot, smelly, colorful tour of Chinatown, we ran smack into Little Italy. Finally, red wine country! Too full from bagels, we had to resist the promise of a hot Italian restaurateur to buy our meal if we didn’t like it. But it got us to thinking how nice a Cab/Syrah blend like Purple Cowboy Tenacious Red would taste with some authentic Little Italy spaghetti and meatballs.