Legal Sea Foods

Even though wine director David Alphonse has the buying power of a restaurant chain behind him, he could easily be a don't-rock-the-boat kind of wine buyer. Instead, he uses Legal's formidable capital to leverage wine purchases smaller restaurants could only dream of — and to pass the bargains on to us. That's why we can sip hard-to-find wines by the flight or a staggering 100 labels by the half-bottle. Most impressive is the fact that of the nearly 700 bottles, which range from $14 to $600, almost half are under $50. Bravo.