Topped by a gold-lettered awning, it is a fixture of Belmont, the Bronx's own Little Italy, and like its sister cafes, it is loved for its inky espresso, its crisp-shelled cannoli and its comfortable conviviality.
Everyone has an Italian restaurant you call your own, and, for its location, its warmth and conviviality and its wonderful food, Olio e Più: Trattoria e Enoteca is a place anyone from anywhere might claim after one or two visits.
People prize the Bowl for its casual conviviality.
The buschenschank — or its spirit, conviviality and cuisine — is the inspiration for Café Katja, a tiny spot on the Lower East Side, with a menu of simple Austrian fare that is downright cheap, and an excellent selection of beers, wines and schnapps.
Lautrec loved its atmosphere of danger and conviviality: its cafes and brothels, its painters and bourgeois voyeurs and especially its cabaret performers.
"The interest I've had in this concept has convinced me that its informality and conviviality, where you can have just one dish or a whole dinner, is the way people want to eat today," he said.
But the better option is to go with a bunch of friends, steer yourself by the tequila lodestars of blanco, añejo and reposado, and focus on Bartaco's conviviality, not its cuisine.
A realm of red-checkered tablecloths, picture-framed walls and the boisterous conviviality of its polished-wood, horseshoe-shaped bar in the main dining room, Gallagher's is perhaps best known for the display that greets diners as they enter: a windowed wall of aged prime beef, which sways occasionally as it air-dries.
But no one seems to mind, because it allows for conviviality.
It's this conviviality that Chinar's owners are trying to recapture — if in a more modern way.
