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.
In the spring of 2008, the two owners and the design partners, Brad Horn and Maria Berman, headed down to Kentucky, commonly known as bourbon’s birthplace, to explore the Bluegrass State’s urban enclaves and rural scenery and visit a couple of distilleries. “We became inspired by the landscapes and the textures and colors of the process of distillation,” says Horn, “and decided our design should capture that spirit.” Named Char No. 4 after the practice of burning the insides of oak bourbon barrels prior to aging (with No. 4 being the most intense level of charring), the restaurant opened in September 2008. Abstract references begin on the facade, which is clad in water-jet-cut steel that resembles barrel staves, and continue inside—enhanced by a rich aroma rising from a basement smoker—to a palette of warm materials, such as the oatmeal-colored grass cloth that lines the walls and alludes to grain mash.
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