Restaurant Beer Menus Are Going International in NYC

At Huda, the Levantine bistro in Williamsburg, the beer list is small but carefully chosen. There might be a sumac and sour cherry gose that plays up the sour cherries in the kebab karaz, while a crisp lager, balanced with Persian blue salt, offsets the tang of the smoked labne. Both are made by the local Back Home Beer, a Persian and woman-owned beer brand that produces on Staten Island.

Across the city, restaurateurs are getting creative with culturally specific brews — whether sourcing from breweries less known in the United States or working with local producers for flavors exclusive to the restaurant. They’re going beyond the basics — Chinese restaurants sourcing Tsingtao, Thai spots offering Singha — to offer rare or small-batch beers that draw on and enhance the flavors of the cuisine. Though the craft beer market may finally be peaking — at least according to a recent New York Times report — its growth has led to an exciting rise of globally influenced beers.

Phoenix Palace celebrates Chinatown, new and old. At the restaurant, sip a pilsner with green Sichuan peppercorns, the citric twang amplifying the savory salt and pepper cuttlefish. It comes from the Hong Kong brewery Young Master, considered to be a leader in the modern Asian craft beer scene.

At Chola and Lungi in the Upper East Side, you can pair pani puri or fish fry with cans of Rupee. Founded in 2020, the growing Indian American beer brand is crafted to be served with “Indian, spicy, and world” cuisine, speaking to diners’ increasingly globalized palates.

There’s also innovation in Thai beer, both imported and domestic. At Thai Diner, guzzle the new “Thai Disco” alongside Massaman curry disco fries; the spicy, herbaceous lager is made for the restaurant by Connecticut’s Twelve Percent Beer. It features lemongrass, pineapple, and red and green Thai bird chiles, inspired by a beer that chef and co-owner Matt Danzer used to make himself. An older version was served at Uncle Boon’s, the precursor to Thai Diner. But with that restaurant closed, “it made sense to rename [the beer], rebrand it, and try to make a better version,” Danzer says.

At Williamsburg’s Kru, quell the heat of a squid salad with Bearnana Wit from the Thai brand Yodbeer, made with sundried bananas. Thanks to a new initiative from a Thai beer distributor, beers previously unavailable in the U.S. are now hitting New York City restaurants. For Jeff Sivayathorn, a partner at Kru, sundried banana is “exactly what we eat in Thailand,” he says. “I think everyone knows Singha and Chang, and this is a good opportunity to offer something else.”

At Huda, the decision to serve Back Home Beer was influenced by shared points of view. Zahra Tabatabai makes beers inspired by the ones her grandfather brewed in Iran. More than that, she wants to show that Iranian beer, while rare in NYC, is an ancient practice. “She’s taking recipes that her family had back home and applying them here in the city,” says owner Gehad Hadidi, whose restaurant speaks to his Syrian, Lebanese, and Palestinian heritage. “That’s a really similar story to what our restaurant does with our cuisine.”

Greenpoint cafe Edy’s Grocer serves Back Home’s sumac beer in addition to the imported, mass-produced Lebanese beer, Almaza. Frosty, with lemon juice and a salted rim, as often served in Lebanon, it’s a fitting accompaniment to their fresh, herby sandwiches and salads. If the former beer speaks to modern life in the diaspora, the latter is all Old World throwback. Almaza “brings me back home,” says owner Edy Massih, for whom the beer evokes beach days in Lebanon with his grandfather.

This cultural specificity extends beyond beer. Even wine is diversifying: A new wave of Korean spots, like Chinatown’s Sunn’s and the East Village’s Sinsa, are sourcing locally made makgeolli. The new China Wine Club will soon bring wine from Chinese producers to New York, and Lai Rai on the Lower East Side spotlights a Vietnamese rice wine maker.

Some restaurateurs are trying to build a market for less familiar beverages. Huda is also expanding its focus on arak, an anise liquor that’s typically distilled from grapes, Hadidi explains. Though arak is popular in the Levant, it’s less popular here. Hadidi’s goal is to introduce diners to different flavor profiles to “start building that knowledge base.” As with beer, he’s sourcing locally when possible: Huda also serves a Yonkers-distilled version of the Persian spirit, aragh sagi, made with raisins.

Group B

When it came to the beverage menu at the Unapologetic Foods’ restaurants — most of which are Indian, one of which is Filipino — chef and partner Chintan Pandya wanted beer made “with our ingredients” and “that goes well with our food.” Pandya also knew he didn’t want to serve any commercially available beers and wanted to prioritize a maker within the five boroughs. That’s how Unapologetic’s collaboration with Transmitter Brewing, based in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, was born in 2023.

The line of Unapologetic-exclusive beers includes a basmati rice lager, coconut IPA, and a mango saison. Everything was done “thinking of the Asian diaspora,” Pandya says. “India uses a lot of coconut, the Philippines uses a lot of coconut.” Today, they “sell a lot of beers between all our restaurants.”

Sure, it would be cheaper to source Stella, though you could just as easily buy that at a bodega. “But,” Pandya says, “If I create exclusive beers for you or beers which are very specific to the breweries, we are creating a very unique experience.”