The Lower East Side has been a restaurant destination for nearly a decade now, which is more than enough time for a region to develop its own unique sense of dining “terroir.” These days, I’ve noticed, many of the fashionable restaurants in the neighborhood are decorated like private Edwardian smoking rooms. There are dark oil paintings on the walls and shelves of literary books scattered here and there. Candles supplement the lighting in the dim tenement spaces, and you might even see a stuffed animal or two, in imitation of the famous stuffed-animal displays at the popular, seminally scruffy Lower East Side restaurant Freemans. Bartenders aren’t bartenders anymore; they’re “mixologists” who specialize in retro cocktails like the Manhattan and the gin rickey. The menus are filled with retro items, too (sliders, pork terrines, curry soups served British Ye Olde style), although chances are that your dinner will be perambulated to the table by at least one food runner wearing a nose ring.
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