Not every piece of restaurant bling has to cost $40,000, as did the light at Jean Georges. The two circles that make up the back bar at Smith and Mills cost nada. Designer John McCormick, whose firm Parts and Labor also worked on Tailor and his own restaurant Moto, salvaged all of the wood forms you see in that restaurant from two Dumpsters outside of Abbe Engineering, a Williamsburg firm founded in 1901 that used to cast water pumps and the like until its Civil War–era building was demolished. “I drove by in my van and spotted the stuff,” says McCormick, “and spent three hours pulling out the best pieces.” The two mahogany circles, which are about four feet in diameter, were the endplates of a large water pump, perhaps intended for a reservoir. Now that they hold booze, the best tribute you can pay them is to pump the stuff into your stomach.
