{"id":132428,"date":"2026-02-13T14:14:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T14:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/132428\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T14:14:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T14:14:07","slug":"nyc-restaurants-love-keaps-wood-cabin-candle-for-bathroom-ambiance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/132428\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC Restaurants Love Keap\u2019s Wood Cabin Candle for Bathroom Ambiance"},"content":{"rendered":"

A version of this post originally appeared in Eater Today, which spotlights the freshest news and stories from across the food world every day. Subscribe now<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s in the bathroom at Smithereens<\/a>, and it\u2019s in rotation at Cervo\u2019s<\/a>, Eel Bar, Hart\u2019s, and the Fly. It\u2019s at June Wine Bar<\/a> and Rhodora. I knew Schmuck<\/a> smelled familiar \u2014 and then, yep, there it was. I swear I\u2019ve sniffed it at Tatiana, though my email asking for confirmation went unanswered. An Eater colleague clocked it at Elsa, and immediately bought one of her own (and then received another as a Christmas gift).<\/p>\n

Sophisticated but not overwhelming, recognizably branded but not flashy, it\u2019s the Wood Cabin candle from Keap<\/a>, and in New York City restaurants, it\u2019s become a modern classic as far as bathroom candles go.<\/p>\n

Both Nick Tamburo of Smithereens and Moe Aljaff of Schmuck wanted Wood Cabin after smelling it at other restaurants. For Aljaff, that was, specifically, Cervo\u2019s, he said in an email: \u201cI remember walking into their bathroom and thinking it smelled unusually good, which is not a thought you normally have in a restaurant bathroom.\u201d With notes of cedar, palo santo, and fireside embers, it offers a \u201cromantic, transportive quality\u201d that pairs well the \u201cthe small, cloistered, and intimate rooms\u201d of his subterranean restaurant<\/a>, according to Tamburo.<\/p>\n

Wood Cabin, which was launched in 2015, is Keap<\/a>\u2019s most popular scent. The owners of June Wine Bar have been fans of the company since its days as a small, Brooklyn-founded brand (it\u2019s now based in the Hudson Valley town of Kingston) and have used the candle since June opened. It\u2019s the first restaurant where Keap owner Harry Doull smelled his candles in the wild.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur work with restaurants started organically and that\u2019s still the case for the most part,\u201d wrote Doull in an email. Hospitality clients, including restaurants, make up just shy of 10 percent of the company\u2019s sales, though for some businesses \u201cwe offer bulk pricing and have developed ways to be better partners over time,\u201d he explained. Doull, who grew up in a restaurant family, thinks the places that use Keap tend to share similar values around hospitality, artisanal production, and sustainability; restaurants can send back their empty glass vessels for Keap to reuse.<\/p>\n

In NYC, there\u2019s a referential quality to stocking your bathroom with a candle as commonplace as Wood Cabin; for some people, that\u2019s actually part of the draw. \u201cI\u2019m skeptical of originality,\u201d Aljaff wrote. \u201cMost places that claim to be original are usually just louder about it. What we do is create a room made by what we\u2019ve been inspired by and various details we like \u2014 from restaurants, bars, films, music, art, conversations, bathrooms \u2014 and put them together in a way that feels coherent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keap calls its candles \u201cnatural luxury.\u201d At $54.50 for a single candle, that luxury is a little easier to stomach than even bougier options like, say, Le Labo<\/a> or Diptyque<\/a> \u2014 especially when, as June continues to experience, diners still occasionally steal the candle.<\/p>\n

If woody\u2019s not your thing, here\u2019s some candle inspiration from other NYC restaurants:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A version of this post originally appeared in Eater Today, which spotlights the freshest news and stories from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[56650,56651,56652,9,56,63,65,64,56653,56654],"class_list":["post-132428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-add-to-cart","tag-buy-this-thing","tag-food-and-restaurant-trends","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-shop-the-restaurant","tag-shopping-guides"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}