Oak Bond’s neighbor from a past era, The Smile (26 Bond St.), is our favorite one-stop source for homey ambience, creative yet rustic farm-to-table fare (some sample eye-wideners from chef Melia Marden’s menu include: basil lemonade, minted sugar snap peas with sea salt, and manouri cheese & fig sandwiches), objets d’art, newspapers, gourmet goods, and lattes. Basically, once you arrive, you’ll want to kick up your heels and stay the day. “I think for The Smile, and other places we’re working on, it’s really all about good vibes” remarks co-founder Matt Kliegman about the infectious all-pervading comfort that keeps regulars stopping by daily. With its wood-paneling, antique tables, exposed brick and dim gas-lighting, the digs conjure up visions of a 19th-century Main Street general store. However, unwilling to let the traditional restaurant model dictate their boundaries, Kliegman and co-founder Carlos Quirarte expanded The Smile into a multi-hyphenate creative/retail space which once included a Scott Campbell-helmed tattoo parlor in the basement. This innovative bridging of culinary and visual artistry is exactly what makes The Smile a futuristic endeavor despite the quaint ambience. Oakazine stopped by The Smile to chat with Kliegman and Quirarte about their first-hand takes on food as art, art as food and other matters of the eyes and stomach. Interview after the jump. — Marlo Kronberg
What was your initial vision for this place?
C: It’s changed. We knew that we wanted to someday have a bar, but for this space we were thinking about a place for our friends. Kind of a home base. We weren’t sure how that was gonna function though. I ran retail stores (Earnest Sewn) where people just would come and hang out, but we both knew we wanted to get into the restaurant business. So we decided to combine them both with a tattoo shop. But then we kind of slowly realized that retail and restaurants are two very very separate businesses — it’s hard to do both effectively in the same location. Now we are definitely more restaurant.
So more restaurant then retail?
M: Still retail…
C: We’re introducing some new stuff. We’ve learned a lot about what our customers who are eating here want, so it will be changing. It will be evolving. I mean, you don’t want a bunch of wool on your shelf during the summer time. Also, If you’re eating here you might not want to buy a piece of lingerie or a bathing suit.
I just got back from France, where the chefs are considered top-tier artists. Nowadays the arts are getting increasingly bridged. How do you think food and art are intertwining?
M: We actually have a friend who does vegetable butchery.
Vegetable butchery?
M: She’s a real food artist. Her name is Jennifer Rubell. She did a Brooklyn Museum exhibition where she suspended molded heads made out of cheese and melted them onto crackers below. She does vegetable butchering at Eataly.
C: The same way you would be like “I need this cut of meat.” you would be like “I need these radishes to look like flowers.”
M: I think in the artistic respect — our chef Melia Marden does a lot of artistic stuff with food. I joke with her sometimes that the name of her cookbook should be “Cooking With Color”. She hates that name but I really like it. She makes dishes sometimes where the colors are completely striking. I mean, even a simple chicken soup is striking. I think there are obvious parallels between the technical skills of a painter and the technical skills of a chef. Similarly, you could have a plate of food — and it could be a simple hamburger — but focus a bit more on how it’s presented and the color composition of it and it can be a completely different experience.
What about the flavor? Is the flavor an artistic endeavor as well?
C: I would consider myself a foodie, but I don’t want an egg sandwich with bacon foam.
M: Ha! It’s not even an egg sandwich. It’s a roll that just tastes like an egg sandwich.
C: Not to say that that isn’t artistic.
M: I find that with our tastes — food should just taste good and look good. That, in itself, is a really satisfying experience. Working with seasoning and flavors is an artistic process, I think that what sets really good chefs apart is that they have more universal palates.
This place is very old-style Americana — it feels almost like an old timey general store. How do you seek to reassert Americana into this increasingly international city?
M: Well, we have Oak right next door — you got the future and the past.
C: I actually do like the contrast a lot. It wasn’t our original intention to reference the past, but this building is from 1830. It had such beautiful bones already. We kind of just went with that.
What’s your favorite underrated fruit or vegetable?
C: What I really really like is okra. And you don’t really see a lot of it unless your in Georgia. I love that stuff.
How do you like it?
C: I like it fresh
Good answer.
M: I grew up not really eating. I had a weird palette when I was a kid. I wouldn’t eat brussels sprouts and I wouldn’t eat mushrooms. Any vegetable that looks funny I wouldn’t eat. Now I happen to really love mushrooms.
Mushrooms? Whats your favorite variety? Or your favorite way to cook them?
M: We kind of have a derivative of it here. When you cook a bunch of mushrooms in parchment paper or tinfoil, you see it a lot in Japanese restaurants — that’s my favorite. Or risotto with mushrooms.
You guys have local distributors for your food right? Why do you think its important to keep it local? Foodwise and otherwise?
M: The truth is it’s more expensive. But in theory if more people do it, the less expensive it will get. If you want to serve avocados you can’t if you have a very strict focus on local produce. But, as a restaurant, you kind of just do what you can. Throw your hat in the ring as much as you can. About 70% of our produce is local.
G: It’s also a lot easier to work with some of the local purveyors. Farm grown, farm fresh and two hours away.
Do you have a favorite local distributor or farm?
G: I happen to really like our milk which is from a company called Hudson Valley Fresh. It’s owned by a retired surgeon, and he treats the cows consistently humanely. It’s also really delicious milk.
What made you put a tattoo parlor in here? How do food and tattoos go together?
C: All I know is that the entire staff all have two new tattoos somewhere on their body. Scott Campbell — we’ve done a bunch of events together — wanted to test it out. We had the space and we figured we would just try it out. It’s probably an excuse for us to hang out more.
What are your missions as restauranteurs?
C: I think that if we continue to create spaces where we really want to spend our time other people will want to spend time there too. I just want to keep having fun — this is fun for me — and I’ll continue to do it till it’s not fun anymore.Then we’ll figure out what’s fun after.
M: I think for The Smile, and other places we’re working on, it’s really all about good vibes. We want people to be comfortable and have fun.
What is the coolest new discovery you’ve made recently in anything food, art, what-not?
M: Personally I’ve just been learning this past year how simple it is to make your own fresh mozzarella. I didn’t do too well yesterday, but I’m gonna try again. I’ve got a new technique.
