Photos by Kim Pham, Illustration by Thanh Nguyen
Frog Wins BKMAG’s Readers’ Choice Award for Best Bar in Brooklyn
The Bed-Stuy wine bar earned its spot with rotating food pop-ups and a stern standard for natural white, red, orange, rosé, and sparkling
Illustation by Thanh Nguyen
Virtually unassuming and located across the street from the towering 13th Regiment Armory, Frog, a wine bar in the heart of Bed-Stuy, emits an unpretentious, casual-yet-buzzy vibe. It feels like a watering hole, beckoning you inside with its in-crowd and expertly curated glass and bottle selections.
The founders, Alexandra McCown and Charles Gerbier, a married duo, had a vision in mind when they opened the venue in 2023. They sought out to make natural wine more accessible and affordable, in hopes that visitors would spend ample time in the space without completely emptying their wallets. “We just noticed that there was nowhere in our neighborhood to go drink natural wine and it was always frustrating. We have to go to Fort Greene, Clinton Hill. I’m going into the city,” McCown told Brooklyn Magazine over the phone in mid-November. “We were like, ‘How nice would it be to just be able to walk over and have a glass of wine somewhere and then walk home?”
Frog offers their natural wine at $15 to $16 a glass, and $60-ish and up for a full bottle, ensuring that a patron would need to spend upwards of $35 (factoring in tax and tip)—not quite a bargain, but also not the $20-plus you might put up for the same glass elsewhere. For McCown and Gerbier, quality comes at a cost on both sides of the bar, and they’d rather present a reliably ace menu than let their taste slip. “There are some natural wine that you can get out there that, of course, we could sell for $12 or $13, but they taste like crap,” McCown laments, adding how tarrifs have also factored into the stocking calculus, which is probably why the cheapest things on the menu aren’t wine at all, but two varieties of beer and non-alcoholic spritzes.
(Photo by Kim Pham)
I stopped by on a weekend night. A collection of wine bottles sat atop the marble bar, chilling in a large tub of ice, bartenders zipping back and forth, filling stubby wine glasses embellished with the very same frog mascot radiating off the neon sign out front. Gallery walls of art adorned moody green walls. The menu offered a selection of white, red, orange, rosé, and sparkling to pour over.
It’s packed, as it often is—you can barely hear yourself over the raucous chatter and Erykah Badu in the dimly-lit space. Its crowd is hip, attracting young people seeking refuge from the bevy of generic cocktail bars down the street. Couples and TikTok influencers scanned menus, huddled together to combat the draft that gusts through the door as more patrons spill in. A throng of people formed around the pool table (a particularly audacious touch) in the back of the bar, creating a queue to play in this wine bar masquerading as a laid-back dive.
(Photo by Kim Pham)
You won’t find in-house tapas to pair with your wine here, but they do host a rotation of local food vendors, as highlighted on their Instagram page. Today, the pop-up kitchen is C Marty’s Jerk, run by a collective of friends shuffling over dishes and a hot plate at the front of the bar and serving up a small menu of imaginative Caribbean dishes like jerk pork polenta, a sous vide jerk pork shoulder over a creamy porridge.
Frog has a sprawling vape space/yard seating area out back. “It’s got a lovely, spacious patio where you can just sit and read a book or gab with a friend about your parents’ trauma and then bond with strangers who overheard you and want to talk about their parent’s trauma too,” quips Pakelody Cheam, a regular at Frog and one of several patrons who voted it “Best Bar” in BKMAG‘s 2025 Readers’ Choice Awards. The lot looks able to fit a capacity of 50 or more, adjoined with the yard of Tadpole, a music venue and overflow event space next door with DJs booked and a different feel—like an illicit after-hours spot sexier than its neighbor. Upon entering, you’re enveloped in deep crimson lighting, a riff on the darkroom-core you might see on a night out in the West Village.
(Photo by Kim Pham)
In addition to Frog and Tadpole, McCown and Gerbier run the Frog Wine Shop on Henry Street in Cobble Hill, and Gerbier is also a partner at Badaboom, the bistro and rotisserie chicken haven a couple of blocks away. According to McCown, they’re working on opening a cocktail bar down the street in 2026, as well. If that feels like a lot of action in a few years, it is. But it’s clear the couple has struck a high-low nightlife aesthetic Bed-Stuy residents apparently needed, and that they’re only just hitting stride.
