USED to be haute cuisine was all the rage in restaurants.Now it’s the design that’s haute.A trio of hot architects is transforming New York City’s top eateries into multimillion-dollar shrines to the art of the meal.
David Rockwell, Adam Tihany and Larry Bogdanow have created looks for so many of New York’s top-rated restaurants in the past 10 years, their stylings are considered a key ingredient to success. “It’s become particularly fashionable to say it’s a Rockwell or Tihany restaurant,” says one restaurateur.
As on Seventh Avenue, high fashion comes at a price — at least $250,000, according to sources, and usually much more.
While that price tag may induce indigestion in restaurateurs, all three artists are so busy they’re turning down projects.
“Right now, with how competitive the restaurant industry is, if somebody opens a place with a lame look, even if it has good food and good service, a lot of people won’t go,” says Bogdanow.
Indeed, sometimes a certain “look” is as much a draw as the food itself.
When Tihany unveiled his work at Le Cirque 2000, a chorus of gasps resonated in the national press after reporters previewed its neon lights, bright colors and ill-fitting modern furniture against a backdrop of landmarked Old World refinement.
“Could This Be Le Cirque?” New York Magazine asked on its cover.
Le Cirque owner Sirio Maccione was forced to take a buzz saw to the high-backed purple chairs when the ladies-who-lunch complained they couldn’t see and be seen past their own tables.
“I like the controversy–to do something that’s not expected,” says Tihany.
The granddaddy of the designer restaurant is architect Philip Johnson, who created an enduring, modern look for the Four Seasons in 1959.
Today, high style is reaching all levels of the restaurant world.
Even neighborhood spots in Brooklyn and on the Lower East Side are doing away with ferns and brass rails of yesterday and trying to distinguish themselves from the hash-slinging masses.
While an emphasis on atmosphere is not new, it’s more important than ever. “When I started doing this, there was no such thing as a ‘restaurant designer,'” says Tihany.
“It was all incidental. I started out designing nightclubs in the late ’70s.”
But one club-goer would change the architect’s fortunes for good.
“At the time I had just done Xenon,” he recalls. “One of the people who came to club asked me to design a brasserie in 1982.”
Although the brasserie failed, Tihany, now 52, says he was “hooked” on the notion of designing restaurants.
Since then, he’s completed over 150 restaurants, including the controversial Le Cirque 2000 and Jean Georges, and has completed the recent transformation of SeaGrill overlooking the ice rink in Rockefeller Center.
Up next for Tihany: the Plaza Hotel’s Edwardian Room.Once a banquet room, the elegant space is being turned into a restaurant with the working name of One Central Park South by meat man Alan Stillman, of Smith & Wollensky fame, and mega-restaurateur David Burke.
But Tihany may leave out the Le Cirque-style neon this time around. “I’m trying to be respectful of the existing architecture of the room … and [will] create a contemporary interior without making the place [look] awkward.”
Unlike Rockwell, who has a staff of 135, Tihany manages an 11-person office.
“I love the business and want to be involved in every detail. We don’t have to take [on] every project,” he says. “We can be choosy, because we don’t have a huge organization to feed.”
Larry Bogdanow also began his career during the disco era. “We started out by doing a few clubs and cafes,” he recalls.
“After discos died, the restaurant came into prominence as the new scene.”
It was 15 years ago when Danny Meyer asked Bogdanow and partner Warren Ashworth to design Union Square Café, (Zagat’s highest-rated restaurant this year).
His most recent trendy eateries include City Hall, Sono, Atlas and nearby Jack’s Fifth.
Bogdanow’s style utilizes rich, warm materials and colors in spaces that are softly lit and comfortable and less edgy than Tihany’s. “I’m big on acoustics,” says Bogdanow. “You want to be able to have a business lunch or dinner somewhere and be able to speak in a normal tone. I don’t know if [less noise] ranks as high with the [other designers].
David Rockwell, a Chicago native who grew up on the Jersey Shore and in Guadalajara, Mexico, points out that his first restaurant, Sushi Zen, still thrives as a top-rated maki mecca in Times Square more than 15 years after he first put pen to paper.
His other places, such as Tatou, all of the Planet Hollywoods and Vong, soon followed.
What most likely helped thrust Rockwell into the limelight, however, was his work in Nobu with Robert De Niro, Drew Nieporent and, of course, Nobu Matsuhisa.
The fantasy interior featured an illuminated sushi bar with stools that resembled chopsticks, free-standing birch trees and tongue-in-cheek thunder and rain sound effects in the bathrooms.
Since then, Rockwell’s restaurants have included Nobu, Next Door; Payard Patisserie; Monkey Bar; and Ruby Foo’s Dim Sum & Sushi Palace.
The 43-year-old designer’s interiors reflect theatrical leanings with stage-like decor that invites diners to become part of the show.
“I want my restaurants to connect with people the way that good theater would,” says Rockwell.
His latest undertakings in Gotham are Olives in the planned W Hotel in Union Square (which he’s also designing) and a new branch of Rosa Mexicano near Lincoln Center — possibly Rockwell’s biggest challenge yet. The previous four restaurants at 61 W. 62nd St. have failed.
“One of the things we love being able to do is making difficult spaces work. Nobu was a space that did not work before as a restaurant, and Ruby Foo’s had been many other restaurants.”
Challenges are nothing new to Rockwell, who designed a seaweed wall at Nobu, Next Door — after the first sample he made was devoured by mice in his office.
Today Rockwell and his company of 135 employees –known as the Rockwell Group — are also playing in the architectural big league, with projects such as the new Academy Awards theater in L.A.
“We have model-makers, architects, interior designers, writers and artists. And it makes it easier to switch from large to small projects,” says Rockwell.
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TALE OF THE TAPE:
DAVID ROCKWELL, ADAM TIHANY, LARRY BOGDANOW
