Hospitality Design - August 2009 - 42

news Best Burger When chef and restaurateur Bobby Flay wanted to expand his reach from fine dining into casual restaurants with Bobby’s Burger Palace, he turned to longtime collaborator Rockwell Group for the design. “He wanted us to create a burger joint that would both reflect the classic burger watering hole, and amp up the vibrancy and cutting edge nature of the experience,” says Rockwell Group principal Shawn Sullivan. “[It has a] sleek and crafted sense of energy and playfulness.” Adds Flay’s business partner, Laurence Kretchmer, “We wanted it to be really fun and different. There’s lots of versions of burger restaurants; we wanted it to be unique and distinctive.” In researching various burger joints, the designers fell in love with the roadside burger counter, and reinterpreted it as the focal point of the dining room. “We envisioned the counter as a serpentine shape so that it would be a fun, interactive place to sit, eat, and watch the surrounding activities,” Sullivan explains, adding that besides New York City’s brgr and a few buffets, this is new territory for the firm. “To add even more energy to the space, we abstracted the red, yellow, and green colors of a hamburger with all the fixings, and infused them throughout the restaurant in unexpected ways and crafted designs that would create a vibrant environment.” Stools are orange, cognac, or green; glowing ribbon lights echo the counter’s shape; reclaimed wormwood slat screens line the backbar; light shines through tiny bubbles in handcrafted pendant lamps to create a warm glow; and a feature wall made of a mosaic of reclaimed oak, bamboo, and glass tiles in green, brown, and orange runs the length of the restaurant. Four have already opened in less than a year in Eatontown and Paramus, New Jersey; Lake Grove, New York; and most recently at Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Connecticut, and the Flay team is in the process of lining up more locations. The Other Bridge and Tunnel Designer Julius “Jack” Baum of Tree House Design recently designed two restaurants in two different New York boroughs, with one thing in common: “In each case the different owners told us they wanted their customers to have a Manhattan style dining experience without having to leave their neighborhood,” says the locally based designer, adding that the owners wanted Manhattan-style, but at Brooklyn and Queens prices. For Nuevo Mexican restaurant Trace in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, Baum employed a bright but subdued color palette, raw walnut wood, concrete floors, and stucco walls throughout. The more modern New York touches come in the form of a f loorto-ceiling glass storefront and a custom fabricated cast mirror glass bartop, while an unadorned series of arches break up the space between the front bar and rear dining room and a custom made broken stained glass mosaic of a Mexican blanket acts as a focal point. In contrast, UDU (above) in Flushing, Queens, is a Shabu Shabu restaurant. So here a color palette of warm gray and white prevails, while a natural finished beechwood accents, pops of red, and the use of stone and glass to reinforce the contemporary Asian feel. And since the restaurant is housed across levels in two separate buildings, the resulting combination creates various intimate yet open dining rooms. To help to visually connect them, Baum created a 30-foot-high water feature, which in turn, “added a very essential Japanese element,” he says. Yet the two eateries had more than a designer and a Manhattan sensibility in common. Each restaurant’s façade was nondescript and in the middle of a row of nearly identical buildings. So for Trace, Baum and his team covered the exterior with a lattice of horizontal boards, and for UDU, they designed an entirely new storefront of tilting glass and angled mullions two stories high, inspired by Herzog & de Meuron’s Beijing National Stadium. www.treehousedesign.com www.rockwellgroup.com; www.bobbysburgerpalace.com 42 hospitalitydesign www.hdmag.com
http://www.rockwellgroup.com http://www.bobbysburgerpalace.com http://www.treehousedesign.com http://www.hdmag.com
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Hospitality Design - August 2009
