Opening Shot is a column that peeks inside new hotels, restaurants, bars, and shops with dreamy interiors.
SCHMUCK.
Location: New York City
Designer: Arash Ghassemi & Pauline Deckert
On Offer: Newly opened East Village bar Schmuck. is serving as an antidote to the country’s party deficit. Created by alumni of celebrated Barcelona dive bar Two Shmucks, Moe Aljaff and Juliette Larrouy, the dual-concept space is designed to emulate the flow of a house party, from the cozy and convivial Living Room to the rowdier Kitchen Table. “If you have too much fun here and miss your morning meeting, you’re a schmuck,” Aljaff shares with Surface.
An inventory of the Living Room furniture reads like a design collector’s wishlist—hunter green Togo sofas, glossy Kartell nesting tables, and monochrome Dieter Rams 620 lounge chairs. Bruno Ray stools with robin’s egg blue seats were sanded to fit the curved stainless steel bar. Tucked in the back, a raised platform flips the conversation pit trend on its head.
The intimate vignettes of the larger space give way to the less restrained Kitchen Table, where French hip-hop bounces off the concrete walls. A ceiling-mounted convex mirror helps keep a pulse on the energy, exposing any spare elbow room at the long maple table and ratting out those not-so-slyly swiping for their next date. Aljaff slides shots in stainless steel condiment containers to those schmucks, on the house.
