Design Digest NYC: What’s New? Gourmega
A yellow glass door functions as both spatial divider and performative element, offering a translucent view of the cooks in motion. Photo credit: Seth Caplan
The Substack, Design Digest NYC, recently featured Gourmega, describing it as a “secret, high-end supper club in the Greenwich Village”.
They write:
Before you even think about the food, there’s the door. A translucent circle that connects the kitchen to the dining room, catching light, blurring the line between the culinary process and everything on this side of it.
Gourmega is the first permanent, self-operated restaurant from Ghetto Gastro, the celebrated Bronx-born culinary collective led by Jon Gray. It sits inside a 19th-century building in Manhattan’s South Village Historic District — and the choice of location is no accident. In the 1700s, this part of Greenwich Village was known as the Land of the Blacks, and approximately 30 African-owned farms existed in the neighborhoods around Greenwich Village, Soho, and Washington Square Park. Later, it hosted some of the city’s earliest Black supper clubs.
Nigerien architect Mariam Issoufou spent time excavating that history before touching a single surface. The result is a dark, deeply considered interior that doesn’t just nod to the past; it absorbs it.