A lovely Swiss cafe in the heart of SoHo with indoor and outdoor seating. As wine director of Café Select, Bates pledges to save his clientele (and his wines) from that fate, and has engineered what might be New York's first Alpine wine list, to complement chef Jo Herde's modern Swiss menu. By Alpine, by the way, Bates doesn’t mean exclusively Swiss: "The rule of thumb," he says, "is you have to at least be able to see the Alps from the vineyard. You might need a telescope.” That translates into a refreshingly offbeat cellar that's 20 percent Swiss and 90 percent biodynamic or organically produced, with selections from Austria, Germany, France's Savoie and Rhône, and Italy's Alto Adige, Valle d'Aosta, and Piemonte. The house wine is Côtes du Rhône in a box, and goes for $9 a glass, $12 a carafe