Nu Hotel’s Smith Street lounge Misdemeanor is a witty mélange of open-air café and interior minimalism

by alice forstead

One casualty in the stupendous reinvention of the downtown area since its rezoning in 2004—dominated as it is by one new hotel development after another and private and public investment projects totaling $9.3 billion—is the lack of relatively affordable bar hangouts. What was once a gorgeously dingy elaboration of $3 draft joints has turned into something that can—in the best and worst senses of the expression—be termed theme park-like. Rarer still are sidewalk-extended restaurants in the city’s third-largest business district (after Midtown and Lower Manhattan)—whether casual café articulations and/or open-air drinks venues.

Happily, NU Hotel’s Misdemeanor was designed to remedy both conditions, the former in the form of one of your edit staff ’s best best-guarded (until now) secrets, happy hour at the Smith Street ground-level floor and restaurant, in which there are no less than three bucks off all signatures cocktails and two deducted from all beers. It has, admittedly, turned Friday afternoons into a less than productive writing endeavor, but ones we now feel obligated to share with our readership.

With a design that essentially makes its indoor and outdoor spaces as one continuous expanse, even into the early fall months, the lovely minimal design here is a respite from the blaze of noisy city angles, and manages to be almost inexplicably quiet, at least until the four o’clock crowd of professionals starts rolling in.

Not least because of its insistence upon recruiting borough artists for a variety of commissions within its rooms, the NU Hotel is not simply an outpost of a national brand, but one that seems to have developed a real affinity for the neighborhood—with Misdemeanor a portal to its interior décor aesthetic, and a gateway to the hotel lobby.

The menu of light tapas-based lunches and dinners was designed by chef and Food Network star Chef Jehangir Mehta, the owner of Big Apple restaurants Graffiti, Me and You, and Mehtaphor, with an emphasis on artisanal and fresh ingredients. Fare is currently undergoing a transformation, however, and may veer from its existing platform in certain pivotal respects, but is likely to continue its extension of the James Beard Foundation’s “Better Burger Project,” which strives to reinvent the world’s greatest meat sandwich with a variety of novel ingredients and the introduction of sustainable meat varieties (the garlic fingerling potatoes and scrummy chipotle mayonnaise doesn’t hurt either).

NU Hotel recruited an additional service industry legend when it scored the participation of celebrated mixologist Milos Zica in what is—in this crew’s humble opinion—the most exuberant selection of cocktails in the neighborhood. Its almost worth the price of admission just to watch the staff at work in creating these… almost, but then one begins to taste works of art like the Golden Dawn (flor de cana, Bretzen apple liquor, pear puree, blooming pears, and apples, with slight oakiness coming from aged rum), the West Side (Charbay Mayer Lemon Vodka, fresh lemon, and fresh mint) or the margarita alternative the El Illegal (Mezcal joven, Benedictine, and pink grapefruit)… and the personal insults thrown around the after-lunch edit meeting seem to fade to insignificance. There are brews and wines on hand, to be sure (try not to miss the very lovely and reasonably priced Santa Florentina Malbec from Argentina), but it would be a shame to visit here without taking in at least one cocktail.

Misdemeanor
85 Smith Street / 718.852.8585 / nuhotelbrooklyn.com