Tongue Bui’s Minnibar is a deliberate departure from nightlife openings. The name came to him on a first walkthrough of the space, which had the feel of a hotel lobby: somewhere people could just say, I'm going to Minnibar, and know what they were getting.

What they're getting is a 35-seat room designed by Ivy Studio, anchored by a pizza oven with ten bar seats wrapped around it, and a menu that doesn't commit to a single cuisine so much as a single idea of food people want to eat. Lunch runs sandwiches and pasta; dinner expands into lobster pappardelle and a foie gras-sauced burger.

The kitchen is led by Keanan Ramasamy, with menu input from Luca Marone, grandson of Da Emma's Emma Risa. A weekly pizza omakase at the bar—one slice at a time, Tokyo-style—is the kind of flourish that gives the room its own reason to exist without trying too hard to be something.