Silence is hard to come by in New York. The city has strong opinions about quiet, and those opinions are mostly negative. So when a restaurant full of locals goes still the moment someone walks in, that is worth paying attention to.
The design is doing something that good design rarely manages. It makes the noise in your head stop.
New York has restaurants famous for their food, famous for their scene, famous for a reservation list that takes months to crack. Very few are famous for making people forget how to speak…