Have You Seen This Table Lamp? If You Eat Out in New York, You Will – The New York Times
A sleek newcomer, the Pina Pro, is appearing on droves of outdoor tables in the city — and sometimes disappearing, as diners fall for its mellow glow.
She’s tall and svelte, with a sleek conical hat. She frequents Brand new York City’s most coveted restaurant tables. She lights up a room.
Perhaps you’ve seen her? She’s the lamp. The Pina Professional cordless lamp from the Italian design company Zafferano, to be exact. And she’s everywhere.
In the evenings, servers at the particular stylish Italian language restaurant Altro Paradiso , in SoHo, place Pina Pros on the furniture outside, where the 14 tiny LED lights in each one cast a mellow, romantic glow over the pappardelle with duck ragù. A glow cozy enough, perhaps, to make you forget about the rat that just ran by, or the noise from your Ducati dealership across the street.
At the Dutch , a few blocks away on the particular corner of Prince and Sullivan Streets, the black hue associated with the light matches the columns surrounding the outside tables. One street over, several Pina Pros line the plant-filled dining shed at the particular French-Indonesian restaurant Wayan . The lamp’s list of loyalists keeps growing, mainly in Manhattan: Little Owl , Market Table , Cote , Mercer Kitchen , Vestry , Lodi , Cipriani . Brooklyn restaurants along with Pina Pros include Evelina and Aurora .
“They are the most perfect model that there could be for an outdoor lamp for the restaurant, ” said Lauren Miller, the director of operations for Mattos Hospitality , which runs Altro Paradiso. “They are totally user-friendly, they last a really long time, they don’t blow more than, ” because candles do. At $149 per light, they’re not cheap, but they’re rechargeable.
At Altro Paradiso, several lamps have mysteriously disappeared, Ms. Miller said. When the restaurant didn’t yet have one for every table, “people would fight over them, ” she added.
All the hubbub over a lighting source may remind some diners of the exposed-filament Edison bulb, which the decade ago became a restaurant-décor cliché .
The particular Pina Pro owes its ubiquity in part to the pandemic. In the summer of 2020, when Nyc restaurants were allowed in order to start outdoor service after being shut down, owners suddenly had to make dining on sidewalks and streets — amid the smells and sounds of the particular city — feel since intimate as dining indoors.
It was the lamp’s time to shine.
“Restaurants all over the city started putting dining tables out upon sidewalks within the dark, ” said Barrett Gross, the president of Zafferano America. “I saw this as a tremendous opportunity. ”
The Pina Pro had debuted that will February, the year right after Zafferano experienced officially opened its American branch . But it didn’t sell well at first. So one night in June 2020, Mr. Gross walked around SoHo, where he lives, with two lamps in hand. He approached host stands, set the lights down and turned all of them on.
In the Italian restaurant Cipriani, “one from the hosts stated, ‘When can I have them? ’” Mister. Gross recalled. “It was the majority of enthusiastic response I got ever gotten selling anything in my life. ”
Once the lamps landed at a few Cipriani locations, other restaurateurs began to inquire about them, Mr. Major said. Diners asked if they could buy the lamp on their table.
The lamp “was so good for restaurants at the time when restaurants acquired no idea how to serve meals outside, ” mentioned Joey Campanaro, the chef and owner of Little Owl. It provided “comfort and utility. ”
“The power associated with light is unbelievable, ” he added, “especially in a restaurant. ”
More than 20, 000 of the lamps sold in the past year in the United States, Mr. Gross said.
Sales grew by 910 percent from 2020 in order to 2021, and are on track to more than double in 2022, said Ben Austin, who runs marketing for Zafferano America. Restaurants made twenty to 30 percent of those purchases, many of them in New York. But the lamp will be gaining traction in some other cities, including Miami (where the white model is usually a favorite) and Washington, Mr. Austin said.
From several dining places, diners can order the particular Pina Professional directly through their table, using QR codes placed on the underside of the lamps. The company says it hasn’t spent any money on traditional advertising.
Gianni Morsell, who was eating at the Dutch last Saturday night time, said the girl had never seen a lamp like the Pina Pro. “I would totally buy this regarding my home, ” the lady said.
KwangHo Lee, the particular president from the SoHo plus Upper West Side locations of the Japanese cafe Momoya , saw the particular lamps in the Nederlander in March. He now uses all of them at his SoHo location, and stated he won’t go back to candles, which need to be replaced and cleaned regularly.
But there will always be those who prefer dinner by candlelight. On a recent night from Altro Paradiso, Jillian McKigney switched off the Pina Pro with her outside table, saying it was “a little sterile. ”
Her dining companion, Blair Brice, said the lamp’s small head plus heavy base felt disproportional. She missed the yellow glow associated with a candle, and the particular way this flickers and dances. “Votives forever, ” she mentioned.