The Newest ‘Third Spaces’? Restaurants and Bars That Feel Like a Living Room

Homey new spots from coast to coast show that while we want to go out, we also want to feel like we’re staying in

The same ostrich has been popping up in my Instagram feed over and over lately. It’s a taxidermied beast that holds court in what I initially thought was someone’s house in Europe.

The bird I’ve been seeing in so many birthday social media stories, however, isn’t from an apartment in the Marais quarter of Paris; its residence is New York City’s Brass restaurant and Tusk Bar, which opened two years ago inside Manhattan’s Evelyn Hotel, and is designed to make you feel like you’re entering the opulent home of, say, a European art collector with great taste and, I imagine, an enviable 1stDibs wishlist. The space was designed by Islyn Studio, which says it’s “a love letter to the Parisian apartments of the 1920s.”

As the studio’s founder and creative director Ashley Wilkins tells me, “We imagined it as a kind of French salon, an intimate antechamber and natural prelude to dinner at Brass. During our research, we came across the story of a Parisian apartment discovered untouched after decades, its rooms sealed in time until the passing of Madame de Florian at [age] 91.”

To read more, please visit Eater.