At Selune, an intimate new wine bar in a historic Bed-Stuy building, natural wine and oysters go together like peanut butter and jelly.
Founded by Marc Lioussanne and Bilen Gaga, Selune opened its doors on Halsey Street last week, offering an extensive list of American and European natural wines, fresh oysters, and Japanese sake.
For months, locals have been peering behind the construction fence and popping their heads in to ask what would be opening there and when, Gaga told Brooklyn Paper.
“Then once we opened, people have just [had] honestly positive, amazing energy, and it’s been busy, so that’s a good thing,” she said.
Lioussanne has worked in hospitality for two decades, and he and Gaga first met over a glass of natural wine at a bar he used to run in Paris. Ever since, the pair have shared a love for wine, sake, and oysters from afar — Gaga in Bed-Stuy, where she’s lived for 15 years, and Lioussanne in Paris.
Then, Lioussanne moved to the neighborhood and fell in love with it, and they decided to open a business that would combine their international culinary passions under one roof.
“I feel like New Yorkers are usually much more open-minded to what is new, and trying new pairings and discovering new things,” he said. “And I think the interest for people in New York for natural wine is growing.” .
Because natural winemakers have small vineyards and produce fairly small batches of wine, restauranteurs have to have special connections to get their hands on certain bottles each year, Lioussanne said, and he’s leveraged his longstanding relationships with French winemakers and distributors to bring their wares to Bed-Stuy.
Right now, highlights of Selune’s wine menu include a “bright, fruity” Beaujolais red wine from natural winemaker Thibault Ducroux and a crisp, lightly sparkling François de Nicolay Bulles Dog, produced with grapes grown on a biodynamic vineyard founded in 1834.
For Lioussane and Gaga, pairing oysters with natural wine was an obvious choice.
“If you have a love of raw oysters, you know that you’re getting this amazing taste of the ocean,” Gaga said. “And same with natural wines, you’re getting the unfiltered, amazing taste of the grapes. So the thought of combining those two things is actually not that far-fetched to us.”
The combination of oysters and sake is a little more unusual. Lioussanne’s love for natural wines eventually led him to natural sake, and Gaga first tried the Japanese spirit at one of his bars in Paris.
“[Selune] is kind of like this melding of the love that we had in France for oysters and seafood and trying to bring a little bit of that here to the U.S.,” she said.
Almost everything at Selune — save for the wine and sake — comes from local farms and suppliers, in an effort to keep things sustainable. Their oysters hail from Massachusetts and Nova Scotia, and the furthest-sourced shellfish are grown in British Columbia and Washington state.
The rest of the food menu is largely French-inspired and locally-sourced. There’s duck breast and foie gras from a farm in upstate New York, and artisanal cheeses from Tonjes Farm in the Catskills.
“Everything is super natural … we try to work directly from the farm to the table,” Lioussanne said. “That allows us to select our products and select our producers.”
In designing Selune, Gaga endeavored to preserve some of the building’s historic charm. She embraced its original brick walls and patterned tin ceiling, stained the existing bar a deep walnut color, and added in wooden chairs and tables with pops of green upholstery and plants.
“I want people, when they walk in, to feel like they’re still sort of out in nature,” she said.
The art on the walls is an homage to her Ethiopian heritage.
“It was actually Marc’s idea, because obviously we already have a lot of wines from France, and a lot of the food is representing his culture,” she said.
Ethiopian culture is centered around communal eating, she said, and the artwork they chose emphasizes their desire for Selune to be a place for the community to gather and enjoy good food and drinks together.
“I’ve been in Bed-Stuy for over 15 years, [our goal] is not to come in and create something that is not open and is not inclusive of the community,” Gaga said. “The decisions we’ve made about the decor, about what wine we want to offer … we tried to have it be as intentional as possible to have it be a space that’s representative of Bed-Stuy.”
They also endeavored to keep prices reasonable and avoid the “high nose” attitude that sometimes accompanies conversations about fine wine.
“We really really hope and expect that we have the chance to take the time to talk with our guests, to share that passion, to share some pairings, to share some things,” Lioussanne said.
During Selune’s first week in operation, a pair of women came in and decided to try oysters for the very first time. Before breaking out the full two dozen, he opened one for each of them to sample.
“I was actually a little bit emotional that I had the chance to have them try the first oyster of their life,” he said. “It sounds funny, but trying something for the first time in your life, I think it’s cool. And they loved it.”
