Drive up Pine Avenue from Ocean Blvd and look at all the vintaage buildings, particularly after you cross First Street. Pine is rife with great restaurants and it’s spreading across to the East Village. What you might not notice is this demure building set back from the street a bit– quite large actually. It was once a bank that close and then morphed into a high-end eatery called Madison. Madison soon died due to very pricey (but yummy) food but the space was quite large. It was huge, gorgeously art deo/vintage in feel and yet cold.
Fast forward several years and voila- a new spot within the former bank called thoughtfully THE FEDERAL BAR — a sister store to the one in NoHo. (North Hollywood for visitors). This is one fine building. The huge space that dwarfed Madison and it’s diners has been morphed into several spaces without losing the best part of the visual — the ceilings, the space and what they did to carve up the space created group areas, lounges and they are even taking over the vault to turn it into something special.

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