Chic New Restaurants With an Eye on Design

A good restaurant, the kind of place where you’re a regular, knows how to turn out consistently solid dishes and show you a fun time. But then there are restaurants, admittedly far fewer, where the design and setting are as much of an experience as the meal itself. Being at these striking spots goes beyond the food you’re eating and becomes a full-on event.

Diners in search of the latter—and who isn’t every once in while?—have their pick of several new eateries around the United States getting big buzz.

The celebrated Mexican chef Enrique Olvera, for example, recently opened the vibrant Damian in Los Angeles’s Arts District. His first venture in the city features Mexican dishes that show off California produce. Jesus “Chuy” Cervantes, the executive chef, centers the menu on corn that’s ground in-house into masa and used for tortillas and tostadas (uni tostadas is one of his standout dishes).

Damian’s design, a collaboration between architect Alonso de Garay and interior designer Micaela de Bernardi, is a nod to the industrial neighborhood. The airy space has a polished concrete bar, exposed brick walls, and leafy vegetation.

De Garay says that he saw beauty in the roughness of Damian’s raw space. “We knew the place should maintain its identity. Our only job was to give life through minor interventions, plants, and beautiful furniture; the rest was already there,” he says.

He thought the alfresco dining area was a fantastic gem of a patio hidden in the middle of four beautiful industrial facades. “We used concrete to integrate booths and planters into the existing landscape, almost as if they had been there before,” he says. “We selected plants to grow organically and gradually start taking over the space, like a ruin.”

Over on the East Coast, New York, unsurprisingly, is home to several new restaurants with an eye to aesthetics.

Daniel Boulud’s new French seafood spot, Le Pavillon, for one, is the reservation to snag. On the second floor of the skyscraper One Vanderbilt, near Grand Central Station, the restaurant spans 11,000 square feet and brings the outdoors in with a nature theme. The oasis, created by designer and architect Isay Weinfeld, has a path lined with live trees and foliage, which are also dotted around the towering room.

Downtown at Ian Schrager’s Public hotel, there’s Popular, which is Peruvian with inspirations from other cuisines including Italian and Chinese. Diego Munoz, who hails from Lima, is the executive chef.

Popular features a planted ceiling with a mix of over 50 hanging ferns, ivy, and staghorn. The room also has black walnut banquettes with blue denim fabric, walnut cocktail tables, and cognac leather lounge chairs. The ceviche bar is a standout with its white-and-gray veined marble and stainless steel and glass accents.

The cognoscenti are also vying for a table at the chic Greek Soho boîte Lola Taverna, where dinner is akin to a trip to Greece. Instead of looking to an outside designer, owner Cobi Levy took on the task himself, aiming to create an ambience reminiscent of the tavernas he enjoyed on his trips to the Greek islands of Paros and Mykonos.

Lola has a woven thatched ceiling, large urns, and olive trees, all from Greece, as well as uneven plastered walls and an installation in its outdoor area with thousands of bougainvillea flowers in shades of pinks, whites, and purples. “It’s like being at a restaurant in the Greek isles,” says Levy.

Then there’s Buddha-Bar, an outpost of the original in Paris, featuring Asian cuisine. Set to open in mid-July in Tribeca, the vaulted two-story space blends modern design with the building’s original beams and bricks.

The centerpiece is a more than 16-foot glass-hewn Buddha sculpture that has been created with custom projections and digital art. The main dining room has large-scale metal pendant lights throughout and a color palette of grays, browns, blues, and greens.

In the Hamptons, il Buco al Mare opened in June in the hamlet of Amagansett. Owned by Donna Lennard, the proprietor of the renowned Italian spot Il Buco in New York, her latest project focuses on Italian dishes using local seafood and produce.

The restaurant has a wood-burning oven and marble countertop, accordion glass doors that allow plenty of natural light to stream in, and light wood paneling on the bar and walls. The space is decorated with paintings and ceramics from Lennard’s artisan homeware line, Il Buco Vita.

Moving on to Washington, D.C.: The seasonal American spot Lyle’s, rooted in Art Deco style, has a combination of light brown leather and white cotton banquettes, corked walls, and a custom-made Herman Miller pendant cluster. D.C.-based designer Jacu Strauss is behind the sleek look.

And we would be remiss to leave out Miss River in New Orleans from Israeli chef Alon Shaya, who calls the restaurant his “love letter to Louisiana.” Opening in early August at the Four Seasons Hotel and Private Residences New Orleans, the restaurant will feature his creative versions of local dishes.

Designed by the London-based Alexander Waterworth Interiors, Miss River has a pink quartzite polished marble bar top, brass detailing on the bar, decorative arched screens, colored stained glass, and textured scalloped wallpaper in soft pink tones. On the walls hang works by local artists.

Memorable places in more ways than one indeed.

Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest