“Backgammon is the cruelest game — so much of it is based on luck,” said Joe Urso, who was one tournament away from earning his grandmaster title, but down a few points in his match on a recent Wednesday night last month.
Mr. Urso, 41, and several other backgammon enthusiasts were meeting for the Clinton Hill Backgammon Club’s weekly game at Funny Bar, a new jazz-bar-restaurant on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The backgammon club typically convenes in the restaurant’s conversation pit, in the center of the space that once housed a mechanical bull.
Before Funny Bar, the Essex Street venue lived several lives. It was once a Western-themed barbecue joint, then a hip-hop brunch spot. And for 40-years, it housed Schmulka Bernstein’s, New York City’s first kosher Chinese restaurant. The current owners, Tom Moore and Billy Jones, have worked some relics from these disparate incarnations into Funny Bar’s design. But they made sure the new version had no distinguishable theme.
“A lot of restaurants and clubs in New York present these very complete ideas to the customer,” said Mr. Moore, 30, whose parents met working in Chicago’s hotel industry. In the past couple of years, the rise of the overly designed clubstaurant has homogenized Lower Manhattan’s nightlife aesthetics: wood treated to look patinated, shelves packed with tchotchkes and vintage photos framed to imply a storied, local status that has yet to be earned.
The cavernous 2,800-square-foot interior of Funny Bar, designed by Safwat Riad, reflects a cheeky, Lynchian sensibility, with kitschy glass bricks, a slick grand piano and just-between-us lighting. The dining room’s walls are lined with purposely empty shelves. Crayons and paper tablecloths add a playful vibe to the massive, low-slung leather booths. Servers with face tattoos wear spotless, buttoned-up uniforms, adding to the sense of dissonance and mischief. The overall effect may make diners feel like children who stole their parents credit cards and went out for martinis.
“There are a lot of couples mindlessly doodling each other, but I really like when there are businessmen eating together and they start using the crayons to do math on the tables,” said Ava Schwartz, Funny Bar’s director, who, alongside Mr. Moore, can be spotted most nights greeting regulars and running steak frites. Funny Bar goes through about 600 crayons a week.
The owners did not bother with a drink menu. “We’re not really going for special,” said Funny Bar’s head chef, Raphael Wolf. The restaurant’s menu is appropriately simple and crowd-pleasing: salad, steak frites and a brownie sundae. Usually, there’s an off-menu vegetable dish. Of the decision to offer only steak, Mr. Moore said he did not want diners to feel bloated or like their breath smelled; he wanted to keep the night sexy. “And nothing is sexier than steak,” he added.
Mr. Moore and Mr. Jones opened the more popular Nightclub 101 just a few blocks away, but they have been reluctant to over-publicize Funny Bar, preferring to let it find patrons slowly. The location — tucked away on the side of Essex Street that most New Yorkers avoid — makes it that much more “if you know, you know.” The bar does not promote scheduled musical performances, and it has fewer than 3,000 Instagram followers.
Despite being coy about seeking attention, Funny Bar has found an eclectic fan base. On any given night, the crowd includes young fashion hounds, baby stockbrokers, middle-aged couples on dates and musicians like King Princess and the Dare, who are connected to Mr. Moore and Mr. Jones through their third venue, Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn.
Over the course of a typical night, tables and parties tend to merge, with guests eventually spilling into the conversation pit, mirroring the bustle and spontaneity of live jazz — the only music you’ll ever hear in Funny Bar. (So much is its commitment to the genre, that it was even worked into the restaurant’s phone number: 212-516-JAZZ.)
Some patrons have compared the social swirl of Funny Bar to that of the bars portrayed in the first season of Sex and the City — a comparison that proves itself every time someone writes their phone number down in crayon, tears it from its sheet and hands it off to a cute stranger.
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