Designed by Studio Omar Aqeel, Only Love Strangers is a cocktail lounge + restaurant on Manhattan?s Lower East Side that is awash in cobalt blue.

A mélange of cobalt tile, chrome finishes, and walls awash in azure conspire for enchanted evenings tucked away in Only Love Strangers, a new bi-level cocktail lounge and restaurant on Manhattan?s Lower East Side designed by Brooklyn-based Studio Omar Aqeel for a newly-founded hospitality group helmed by directors Amelie Kang, Simona Petrovska, Christian Castillo, Irene Li, and Yishu He. Its electrified environment evokes the spirit of speakeasies where patrons may indulge in aphrodisiacs, imbibe craft cocktails, and vibe to live jazz.

When in full swing, the 6,300-square-foot space is blanketed with hearty whiffs of mediterranean cuisine throughout the ground level bar, lounge, and dining rooms just as the bleats, harrumphs, and exaltation of horns ? often accompanied by torchy vocals ? waft up through the well from the cocktail lounge and live performance space visible below. Aqeel references an ethos from the Roaring Twenties while applying aesthetic tenets from the 1950s and 60s for a subversive, retro-futuristic interior architecture. ?We focused on raw assemblies, anachronistic discourse, transmutative perceptions, and material juxtapositions,? notes Omar Aqeel, founder of his eponymous studio. All that is to say, inquiring minds are encouraged to find themselves intoxicated on electric blue hues and blended ha...