Last June, during the opening week of pastry boutique Lysée, New Yorkers stood in lines that stretched across East 21st Street all the way from Park Avenue South to Broadway. Everyone wanted a taste of pastry chef Eunji Lee’s “Corn,” a cake made of corn mousse and grilled corn cream that looks like an actual corn cob. In the first six months alone, Lee sold 6,000 of just that one dessert.
Although people come to Lysée for the whimsical creations, they often pair the pastries with a homemade beverage—from herbed calamansi lime juice to the signature milk infused with toasted brown rice. There’s also a variety of coffee, tea, Korean specialty tea, and kombucha. But on June 14, Lysée will introduce a new category to the drinks menu: wine.
“I love the experience in a restaurant of a wine pairing with food,” Lee says. “Why not for desserts?”
Even before opening, Lee always knew that she wanted to bring a wine program to Lysée. She’s had some experience curating wines to go with dessert; as the pastry chef at Jungsik in Tribeca, a fine dining Korean restaurant, Lee created a dessert tasting menu that had an optional wine pairing. The wine list at Lysée—which includes still, bubbly, and fortified wines as well as two Korean rice wines—is both a nod to the French tradition of drinking Champagne with dessert and a way to further position the patisserie as a destination for celebrations. “We have a lot of people who come for birthdays or anniversaries,” Lee says. “Couples or mothers and daughters celebrating special occasions.”
When you’re inside Lysée, sitting at a table topped with desserts almost too beautiful to eat, it’s easy to feel awestruck. There’s a romance to this place that evokes tea time at the Plaza, minus the frills and with a more subtle charm. The space itself, all whites and grays, acts as a blank canvas on which the colorful pastries pop. Here, the elegance of Paris blends with the creativity of Seoul, all wrapped up in the pulse of Manhattan. You get the sense that you’re experiencing something one-of-a-kind. And then you walk upstairs, to the pastry gallery, and see something you’ve never seen before: all of Lee’s desserts lined up as though they’re precious diamonds.
Lysée has always been unique—an amalgamation of Lee’s identity as a self-described “Korean French New Yorker” who grew up in Busan, worked in Paris (under pastry chef Cedric Grolet at Le Meurice), and started her business in New York—but the introduction of a wine program turns the patisserie into a kind of place that doesn’t really exist in the U.S. “There are not that many spaces that offer only dessert with wine,” Lee says. “Usually if you go to a restaurant and do a chef tasting menu, at the end of the meal you’re getting dessert and maybe a sweet wine.” But at Lysée, dessert is the meal—and now, wine can enhance the experience.
Take the seasonal strawberry tart made with fresh strawberries, honey cream, and strawberry compote that has a touch of black pepper. Lee loves to pair this dessert with a Moscatel from Málaga, Spain, which she describes as “sweet but not too sweet, and a little bit refreshing.” The wine has high acidity which plays off of the tart’s citrusy, peppery notes for a tasting experience that emphasizes ripe red berries and sweet summer fruit.
Lee’s other favorite pairing is a Tokaji from Hungary with the eponymous “Lysée”—a cake shaped like traditional Korean roof tiles called giwa, made of toasted brown rice mousse with caramel, Elliot Pecan sablé, and praliné. This dessert, the house signature, is nutty and toasty. The rich, honey flavor of the Tokaji brings out the pastry’s underlying sweetness and subtle saltiness.
Some bottles on Lysée’s wine list, like the Krug Champagne and La Caravelle sparking rosé, go well with every dessert. Others work best with specific pastries. According to Lee, the Donnhoff Riesling pairs well with the “Petit Jardin,” a tart made of pineapple-Thai basil marmalade, calamansi cream, and coconut, while the Yangchon Cheongju, a caramel-forward Korean rice wine with savory undertones, is perfect with the “Corn.” The Port and Madeira both work with the “V.I.C.,” or “Very Important Chocolate Cake,” Lee’s version of a chocolate layer cake made with sponge, chocolate cremeux, Timut pepper caramel, and dark chocolate mousse.
The wine list is intentionally small, curated for summer. “At the beginning, we wanted to start as a simple but essential menu,” Lee says. “Slowly, we want to develop it.” Lysée will also be expanding their hours, keeping the noon opening time but adjusting closing from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. They’ll gradually add in longer hours throughout the rest of the week.
As the dessert menu changes, so will the wine list. Lee wants to see natural wines in the mix, and cocktails will come eventually. But for now, she’s excited to share a whole new Lysée experience while keeping the core of the place the same: an intersection of Korea, France, and New York. Just like Lee herself.