Restaurants, like poker players, have certain tells, minute signifiers that betray a whole constellation of facts. Restaurant Tells is your decoding ring to the restaurant scene.

Hip chandeliers, those demanding and ornate confections of light and contemporary matériel. They aren't Richard Kelly's Four Seasons chandelier. Neither are they the conservative affairs hanging above customers of One if By Land Two if By Sea. No, these are the slick lighting ornaments that shout "Look at me, I'm hip!" On the inside, they look something like a freshly slimmed-down dad trying to sleep with his daughter's friends on the hood of his "new" vintage Mustang.

The ideal hip chandelier contrasts Lucite and crystal, or is composed of die-cast metal, or of wine glasses. Other chandeliers, and one in particular, are "hip" by virtue of their strange topographical placement. But all communicate something about what the restaurant intends to give its guests.

Take Midtown's Amalia, for instance, and the basement portion, D'Or. Upstairs, black seemingly velvet-clad chandeliers hang in one room, evoking a sort of sombre debased elegance, like an upscale Trash and Vaudeville. Downstairs in the hip lounge area, as was much touted in all the PR material, there
s another chandelier. This one... close to the ground! That's right, hanging mere inches from the floor, the chandelier is tucked into an alcove. The idea, it seems, is that D'Or is bringing the haute sensibilities of midtown to the downtown subterranean cool. Other related décor touches include paintings on the ceiling and a glowing set of stairs. The food, as over-the-top as the lighting imagery, wants you to know it is trying, really really hard to be cool.

The dark crystal chandelier of Megu Midtown, Barbounia's flaming disco ball of light , Caffe Falai's virginal white ornaments and the bucolic-gothic birds of Williamsburg's Dressler seem hellbent on convincing the customers above whom they shine that you can be cool and wealthy at the same time. In most of these cases, the restaurants aim to draw diners from either more northernly environs or more central boroughs.

Their meaning is most difficult to decode. While Edison bulbs serve as obvious signifiers for American cuisine and a specific outlook (earnest, backwards), hip chandeliers function as reassurance of fashion-forwardness. They are always more outrageous than the restaurant they're in. So the problem is that they promise more excess than they deliver, when all they really do is disperse wattage. —Josh

Previously: The Edison Light Bulb

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