City Sip Lounge / Wine Bar

Echo Park, Los Angeles –

Although City Sip may occasionally host a snooty oenophile or two who’s intent on babbling about pucker astringency or brawny tannins, this cozy bar is more about affordable boutique wines for the everyday kind of people.

Even the ones who walk in thinking “full-bodied” refers to fat chicks.

The simple narrow venue is warmly lit, with scattered tables in front and back, two-tops down one side, and a long bar lined with soft, high chairs that present a dismount dilemma after a bottle or two.

Those inveterate Echo Park hipsters are usually here, fueling up on $4 beer and wine during Happy Hour, but so are older area couples, would-be couples, and casual lovers of the grapey good stuff in need of a mellow night.

Bar food includes traditional cheese and charcuterie and larger snacks – like the popular Figging Good (fig and blue cheese) bruschetta – that patrons pair with one of the roughly forty wines available by the glass and the sixty-plus bottles, which are also available for carry out.

Even weekends are chill, when friends mill about the open racks or evaluate the rotating art displays and the bottle mural on the rear wall, and little more than conversation and the sounds of popping corks fill the air.

Perfect for a first date, a small group date, or just a date with a cheese plate, City Sip leaves patrons plump, perfumed, and thirsty for more.