A version of this post originally appeared in Eater Today, which spotlights the freshest news and stories from across the food world every day. Subscribe now.
“There’s a rock in the sink!” That was the takeaway last winter after the East Coast contingent of the team that writes this newsletter met for brunch at Flynn McGarry’s stylish, Scandi-inflected Gem Home in lower Manhattan. While the rest of us waited for our plates of Danish breakfast, Francky Knapp had shuffled off to the bathroom, then returned to the table with newfound excitement at this unexpected find. Naturally, I, too, had to see it for myself. The slab of stone occupied the entire industrial-style basin, a patch of rust-colored mineral deposits at its center where the water hit. Weird! I thought, then I put it out of my mind for months.
That was until I met a friend for coffee at the location of Rhythm Zero in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, which looks more like a room in an art museum than a coffee shop. There, a large hunk of stone sat in front of a large mirror next to the counter. Yet another imposed itself in the bathroom, positioned between the sink and the toilet, as though natural absorption for dripping hands making the trip to the hand dryer. Two establishments with big decorative rocks: a coincidence, or an affectation?
But then, I found myself in Pizza 4P’s, an ambitiously and intricately designed pizza import from Vietnam for which six literal boulders were transported into the restaurant from a stone wholesaler in New Jersey. Now three spots? There’s something going on there.
It’s at Pizza 4P’s, which opened this summer in Brooklyn in a high-ceilinged industrial space, where this trend can be found at its extreme. When you open the door, you’re greeted by a host stand in the form of a large, tablelike boulder. The stone, which was forklifted in, was chosen for this usage because of its waist height and the natural notch in its corner, perfect for holding menus. An adjacent stone, lower and smaller, acts as a bench for diners waiting for their table.
Four more boulders erupt from the space, forcing the layout of the large dining room into a snaking path. “After we found the stones, we changed the position,” global branding director Kazuya Kubota explained to me over a tour of the space. None have been cut into shape; they have all been chosen for their size and form, and then the restaurant designed around them. Some of the stones sprout thick metal support wires, allowing them to weigh down the wooden frames along the walls that hold hanging plants. The largest stone — at around two tons, toward the center of the dining room, with a table butting up against it — is comparable in weight to the pizza oven, according to Kubota. Along with all the hanging plants, the stones give the otherwise industrial space a semblance of nature, bridging the gap between Brooklyn urbanism and the pastoral settings of the farms listed on the menu.
For her rocks, Ivana Somorai, who owns Rhythm Zero, was inspired by the use of natural materials in Japanese design. She told me over email that she also wanted to bring a “natural, unexpected element” into the shop’s interiors. Initially, the Greenpoint location featured several rocks, minimal seating, and a large tangerine tree. When she redesigned the interior — it now features a large couch and more seating — the rocks stayed, mostly because they were too heavy. “I knew they would not be leaving the space for a while,” Somorai wrote.
Since then, rocks have become a memorable feature of the cafe. (Every location looks different; all are very stylish, some feature stones.) The one next to the mirror “unexpectedly became a favorite sitting area for our regulars,” Somorai explains. “The rocks began as part of a specific design moment, but they ended up becoming part of the life of the cafe and the way people use the space.”
As for why the second rock ended up in the bathroom… well, isn’t that kind of the last thing you’d expect? “I wanted people to be surprised when they opened the door: The bathroom is dark, and then there is this large rock. I wanted them to be like, ‘Why is there a rock here?’” Somorai wrote. (Yes, I had that thought.)
I imagine this desire to pique curiosity is part of the rationale at Gem, too. While I couldn’t get ahold of McGarry to know more about the Gem stone [ba-dum-tss], his representative told me via email that, to his recollection, “Gem Home, [the now-closed] Gem Wine, and I think Cove all had/have rocks in their restroom sinks.” This really only opens up more questions though; if only I could have asked them!
As for Pizza 4P’s, those big rocks fit into a bigger philosophy. The chain has dozens of locations in different countries. Each location is unique — its art, furniture, and space designed entirely custom (boulders in Brooklyn doesn’t mean stones in Cambodia). Each country is guided by a different theme. In Indonesia, that’s biodiversity; in the United States, it’s the idea of “what the earth told me.” To that end, they thought of the stones like they did ingredients, Kubota explains: The goal is to find something beautiful in nature and then work around it.
Alas, on my most recent visit to Rhythm Zero in Greenpoint, the rock outside the bathroom was gone. Apparently, that was part of an even more recent renovation. The rocks were moved to the nearby Transmitter Park. Somorai described it as “where they belong, I guess.”
