Listen, for great food, we’ll schlep about anywhere. However, we can’t deny that a well-designed restaurant can heighten the dining experience. The chef may get you in the door, but the architect can also give you a sense of place and help set the mood when you dine there. As restaurants opened across the country again in 2021, we wanted to step back and appreciate the most beautiful among them. Here are the 10 best restaurant designs of the year.
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Le Bon Nosh, Atlanta
Image Credit: Photo: courtesy Anthony Tahlier This understated, elegant and warm restaurant comes from chef-founder Forough Vakili partnering with the LA-based firm Commune. The design blends Vakili’s Persian roots with her French influences (she left a career as a chemical engineer to head to Paris’ Le Cordon Bleu to become a chef). Floor-to-ceiling windows illuminate the pastry case that operates during the day, while dinner is served in a room outfitted with saffron-colored velvet drapes, walnut accents, handpainted wallpaper and a staircase that heads to a private dining space. Even the light fixtures by Michael Anastassiades have meaning, with the star signs for Vakili’s two kids nestled among the installation.
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Bar Blondeau, Brooklyn
Image Credit: Photo: courtesy Liz Clayman About a decade ago, you couldn’t swing a dead cat around without hitting a New York Times trend piece on the goings on of the gentrifying enclave of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The hipster mecca (Vice headquarters are here, after all) has lost some street cred in the intervening years and is now less a place to go to find the cool new band and instead where you pick up your new chinos from J. Crew. But a pleasant addition to the changing neighborhood has been chefs Aidan O’Neal and Jake Leiber, who opened beloved Le Crocodile and followed up this year with their Parisian wine bar Bar Blondeau. Perched on the sixth floor of the Wythe, the project’s architects, Bonetti/Kozerski, took full advantage of the hotel’s outstanding views across the East River. They designed the restaurant so that most of the 70 seats are positioned in a way that lets diners peer out of the floor-to-ceiling windows to gander at the Manhattan skyline while still being surrounded by rich oak walls.
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Soulmate, West Hollywood
Image Credit: Photo: courtesy of Katrina Fredrick In truth, you could divide up the distinct sections of the 7,000-square-foot Soulmate and hand each a design award. The bright, front courtyard area features a retractable roof, a mature olive tree planted in the middle and a pop of green on the tile behind the bar. Venture further back into the restaurant and get a whole new vibe. Head right to where angular wood beams wrap the moody bar or veer left to a more serene dining room with yellow banquettes sitting beneath a custom mural by Santiago Quesnel.
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Saga, NYC
Image Credit: Photo: courtesy Saga The Saga team took it upon themselves to burn sage before opening James Kent’s tasting-menu experience on the 63rd floor of the old AIG Building. They chased the bad vibes, but kept an old school feel to the space.The lush dining room comes outfitted with green marble tables and a color palate befitting Don Draper’s apartment in the later years of Mad Men.
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Carbone, Miami
Image Credit: Photo: courtesy Douglas Friedman Photography The Major Food Group boys made like septuagenarian New Yorkers of yore and decamped for Florida. Except, Mario Carbone, Rich Torrisi and Jeff Zalaznick weren’t there to lounge in God’s waiting room until nature took its course. No, they’ve been in an empire-building mood. The trio has expanded their footprint to Miami with multiple restaurants and even plans for an entire building. Their flagship ode to haute red sauce Italian-American fare, Carbone, arrived on South Beach opulently designed by Ken Fulk. It’s decked out in Murano glass, jewel tones, animal prints, green leather banquettes, Venini sconces and custom brass lamps. It’s lush and over-the-top, as you’d expect from the guys who reimagined the old Four Seasons space in New York.
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March, Houston
Image Credit: Photo: courtesy Julie Soefer Photography Master sommelier June Rodil and chef Felipe Riccio teamed up on another venture this year, opening the 28-seat tasting-menu restaurant March in Houston. From the plateware to the vintage barware to the millennial pink walls to the Murano glass chandelier to the greenery sprawling up the wall of the private dining room, every design touch adds a lovely bit of whimsy to the restaurant. The duo, along with Goodnight Hospitality (Montrose Cheese & Wine and Rosie Canonball) partners Bailey and Peter McCarthy, teamed up with Curtis & Windham Architects and Studio Robert McKinley for a restaurant that looks like it could be your most stylish friend’s home.
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Callie, San Diego
Image Credit: Photo: courtesy Studio Unltd Downtown San Diego can be a mixed bag. Ever since the Padres’ stadium arrived earlier this century and the Gaslamp District worked to revive itself in its wake, there’s still the matter of weaving through the cavalcade of tourists and navigating a metropolis that hangs onto the belief that dueling piano bars are a real hoot. Into this neighborhood steps Callie, chef Travis Swikard’s first solo project. LA-based firm Studio Unltd gave the space a design that matched Swikard’s culinary vision—Mediterranean with a Southern California soul. There are splashes of yellow, rich natural woods and a stunning set of beams above the bar that mimic a cresting wave. And a beautiful, large terrazzo table adds a stunning anchor to the private dining room.
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The Continental, Nashville
Image Credit: Photo: courtesy Emily Dorio Sean Brock is back. But before he opened his signature restaurant Audrey in Nashville, he debuted the Continental, where old school French met classic Americana. The restaurant exudes sophistication with its brown tufted-leather booths, dark wood accents and paneling and blue velvet seats. But it doesn’t take itself too seriously, with wallpaper offering pops of color. And as you wander around you can check out Brock’s own original photography decorating some of the walls.
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Tomo, White Center, Wash.
Image Credit: Photo: Adam J. Wells James Beard Award-winning chef Brady Williams left his job leading legendary Seattle restaurant Canlis to go out on his own. He didn’t stay in the tonier enclaves of the Pacific Northwest, settling in the roughhewn, unincorporated patch of King County, Wash. called White Center. To that neighborhood he brought in the designers from the Seattle and Amsterdam-based firm Graypants. Tomo, named for Williams’ Japanese grandmother Tomoko, has design inspired by the bars and inns of Japan. The slatted wood throughout is meant to mimic the trees outside the restaurant and the lighting that’s integrated into the woodwork offers the spacing a comforting ambient glow.
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Harvey House, Madison
Image Credit: Photo: courtesy Nicole Franzen Inside an old Wisconsin rail station, a pair of fine dining alums have created a warm and welcoming Midwest supper club. Designed by Brooklyn’s Home Studios, Joe Papach and Shaina Robbins Papach’s restaurant preserved much of the building’s old brick and beams, while adding modern touches and local artist Jessica Niello-White’s work to a place originally built in 1903. They took over a shell of a building and constructed an open kitchen that looks out over the first floor dining room and then even made use of the old train platform, enclosing it in glass and turning it into another dining room.
