The Best Wine Bars With Serious Food Worldwide (2026)

James Murphy's 38-seat Williamsburg bar earned a Michelin star and a James Beard best-wine-program award without ever stopping being a place to drink.

Opened in 2015 by LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy with wine director Justin Chearno, The Four Horsemen at 295 Grand Street is the rare natural-wine bar that the Michelin Guide starred. Chef Nick Curtola's short, seasonal menu carries it: veal sweetbread skewers with soy-cured egg yolk, a crisp chickpea crepe, fried skate wing. The waiting list runs seven nights a week. Read our full Four Horsemen verdict for booking tactics.

Jeremiah Stone and Fabian von Hauske's stand-up-friendly Orchard Street room pairs cult bottles with some of the sharpest small plates in New York.

Wildair, at 142 Orchard Street, is the loose, loud sibling to the same duo's Contra. Jeremiah Stone and Fabian von Hauske pour an adventurous natural list against dishes like dry-aged beef tartare with crisp potato, scallop with elderflower, and a famous dulce de leche tart. It is a counter-and-high-tops room built for grazing and a second bottle, and it remains a benchmark for the genre a decade on.

The wine magazine that became a restaurant, Noble Rot serves Stephen Harris's slip sole in smoked butter against one of London's best by-the-glass lists.

Dan Keeling and Mark Andrew turned their Noble Rot magazine into a candlelit wine bar at 51 Lamb's Conduit Street, in a building that poured wine for four decades before them. Stephen Harris of The Sportsman consults, which is why the slip sole in smoked butter is always on and always the order. The by-the-glass list is among the most serious in the city. There are now Soho and Mayfair siblings, but Bloomsbury is the original.

Camille Fourmont's shop-sized 11th-arrondissement bar turns a tin of giant beans into a pilgrimage dish and pours cult bottles from a single fridge.

La Buvette, at 67 rue Saint-Maur, is barely bigger than the wine fridge at its back, with four tables and a thin zinc bar. Camille Fourmont opened it in 2013 and Le Fooding named it the best wine bar in Paris the following year. The signature is almost a joke: giant judion beans in olive oil with Maldon salt and grated citrus that changes with the season. The rest is highbrow grazing, from andouille to fresh cheese.

The walk-in wine bar from the Septime team is the easiest way into their orbit, with charcuterie and a natural list a few doors from the restaurant.

Septime La Cave, at 3 rue Basfroi, is the no-reservations cave a manger run by Bertrand Grebaut and Theophile Pourriat alongside their starred Septime. It is standing-room and small-plate by design: cured meats, a wedge of Comte, oysters in season, and bottles you can drink in or carry out. When the main restaurant's three-week booking window has slammed shut, this is where to go instead. See our Septime profile for the wider story.

Gregory Marchand's no-bookings wine bar on rue du Nil is the high-energy overflow for his restaurant across the lane, with small plates worth the wait.

Across the cobbles from Frenchie restaurant, Gregory Marchand's Bar a Vins at 6 rue du Nil takes no reservations and fills the moment it opens. The plates punch above a wine bar's weight: burrata with grilled bread, bavette with a deep jus, blood sausage and seasonal vegetables, all built to order a second glass. Put your name down, drink at the counter, and watch the lane fill behind you.

Raquel Carena's Belleville bistro is the chefs' wine bar, beloved by cooks across Paris for honest plates and Philippe Pinoteau's natural list.

Le Baratin, at 3 rue Jouye-Rouve in Belleville, has been the cooks' canteen for decades. Argentine-born chef Raquel Carena cooks an unshowy, daily-changing menu, marrow bones, slow-braised offal, a famous sabayon, while her partner Philippe Pinoteau pours one of the original natural-wine lists in the city. It is a bistro first and a wine bar always, and it remains one of the most quietly serious tables in Paris.

A plush, low-lit cellar off the Marche Saint-Germain with a deep list and a kitchen that takes its bar snacks as seriously as its Burgundy.

Compagnie des Vins Surnaturels, at 7 rue Lobineau, is the grown-up end of the Paris wine-bar spectrum: velvet, candlelight, and a list that ranges far past natural wine into serious Burgundy and Bordeaux by the glass. The kitchen keeps pace with foie gras, beef tartare cut to order, and a runny Saint-Marcellin. It suits a date or a slow solo evening more than a raucous one.

The bar that introduced London to natural wine in 2008 still pours it next to proper charcuterie a minute from Trafalgar Square.

Terroirs, at 5 William IV Street, was the Les Caves de Pyrene bar that started London's natural-wine wave, and it has aged into a reliable two-floor classic. The cooking is rustic French-Mediterranean: house charcuterie and rillettes, brandade, snails, plates built to keep a long lunch or a pre-theatre bottle moving. For a first glass of low-intervention wine in central London, it is still the reference.

Ed Wilson's Columbia Road room is the East End wine bar cooks actually eat at, with a list that rewards a slow Sunday and plates to match.

Brawn, at 49 Columbia Road, is the spiritual heir to the Terroirs school under chef-owner Ed Wilson. The menu is pan-European and ingredient-led: the tonno e fagioli, a plate of charcuterie, whole grilled fish to share, all set against a wine list that leans natural without being dogmatic. It is best on the day the flower market runs, when the street and the room are at full tilt.

A bottle shop with a single hot plate and a rotating cast of guest chefs, P. Franco proves you can cook seriously off a bench and a hob.

P. Franco, at 107 Lower Clapton Road, is a narrow Hackney bottle shop with a communal table and one electric hot plate, on which a rotation of guest and resident chefs have cooked some of London's most talked-about small plates. The wine is the draw, low-intervention and constantly changing, but the food, whatever the current cook is sending out, is the reason it became a launchpad. Go for the experiment, stay for the bottle.

Barcelona's loudest natural-wine room pairs cult Catalan bottles with a kitchen that turns out steak tartare and pasta worth the noise.

Bar Brutal, at Carrer de la Princesa 14 in El Born, is the most quoted natural-wine bar in Barcelona, run by the same crew behind the wine importer and shop next door. The list is encyclopaedic and the room is a party; the kitchen keeps up with steak tartare, burrata, and a rotating handful of pasta and grilled plates. It is best late, loud, and with a table of friends working through bottles by the cult Catalan growers on the wall.