Smith Street, in Brooklyn, New York's Carroll Gardens neighborhood, has evolved over the course of the past decade from a rugged urban commercial strip peppered with family shoe stores, bodegas, and windowless Italian social clubs, to the area's restaurant row, playing host to a mix of both serious and theme-heavy establishments, from top-ranked restaurants run by ambitious chefs to a tiki bar named the Zombie Hut. When Sean Josephs, a sommelier, and Michael Tsoumpas, a bourbon collector, decided in 2007 to open a bourbon bar and restaurant serving refined comfort food in a 19th-century row house here, they approached the Manhattan-based firm Berman Horn Studio and expressed their desire for an environment influenced by the Southern whiskey-making tradition. Unlike some of their neighbors, however, the restaurateurs wished to accomplish this with a light touch, without being overtly referential or kitsch.
展开▼
