You may not be able to eat in Gwyneth Paltrow’s dining room or hang on Oprah's Montecito patio, but with more A-list decorators branching into restaurant interior design, you can tap into the style of the stars. Many designers best known for the celebrity projects in their portfolios have recently expanded to projects at eateries around the world. It’s an opportunity to showcase to a wider audience their prowess in pattern mixing, furniture and art sourcing, and creating a mood where you want to linger long after the final course. Because restaurants, of course, are about more than just design. These spaces also serve as places to gather for cocktails or enjoy delicious food. Below, we gather some examples of spaces where you can indulge in style.
Marisol and The Lounge, Boca Raton, Florida
Designer: Colin Cowie
Celeb Clients: He’s designed events for Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Aniston, Oprah Winfrey, and Elton John.
As part of a $150 million revamp at the 94-year-old Boca Raton Resort & Club, celeb party planner Cowie—the resort’s creative director—worked with King & Partners’ Tony King and Inii Kim on the rebranding to amplify the sexy and tone down the stuffy. Inspired by his Sicily and Greek Islands travels, Cowie picked out the Lounge’s art, including Armenia-born Tigran Tsitoghdzyan’s portraits, while Marisol aims to emulate a Mediterranean beach club, white Acapulco chairs and all.
ZZ’s Sushi Bar, Miami, Florida; Legacy Records, New York, New York
Designer: Ken Fulk
Celeb Clients: Pharrell, entrepreneur/philanthropist Sean Parker.
Further heating up Miami’s food scene—Fulk’s designs already sizzle at Carbone and Swan—ZZ’s Sushi Bar debuted this month. Seashell-shaped chair backs, tropical-motif wallpaper, and plants tucked into first-floor bar shelves—along with a seafoam green and salmon scheme in the upstairs lounge—create a sultry subterranean concept. Fulk is also behind Miami’s Goodtime Hotel, including its restaurant, Strawberry Moon, and Legacy Records in New York City’s Hudson Yards, inspired by Italy’s northern coasts and flaunting fluted wood paneling, veined green marble tops and cane-inset coffered ceilings.
Avec Nous French Bistro, Beverly Hills, California; Layla, Sonoma, California
Designer: Kara Smith
Celeb Clients: Fergie and Josh Duhamel, Pete Wentz
Inside Viceroy L’Ermitage Beverly Hills, Smith’s KES Studio project involved a white-marble-wrapped bar and an elegant twist on the mushroom lamp that softly glows atop a gold base. In another area, off-white sculpt chairs shine under a trio of circular light fixtures adorned with exposed bulbs on their rims. Another California restaurant project of Smith’s is Layla at MacArthur Place Hotel & Spa in Sonoma where wicker light pendants and subtly striped dining chairs preach the power of neutrals.
Palazzo Margherita, Bernalda, Italy
Designer: Jacques Grange
Celeb Clients: Paloma Picasso, Princess Caroline, and Aerin Lauder
At the lone restaurant inside Palazzo Margherita—whose owner is film director Francis Ford Coppola—Grange’s careful choices of retaining exposed brick while adding timeless cup drawer pulls below white-marble countertops emulate a rustic Italian home, just like you might find in the surrounding Basilicata region. An eat-in kitchen further drives home the point.
Le Coucou, New York City
Designers: Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch
Celeb Clients: Gwyneth Paltrow
Under Roman and Williams, Standefer and Alesch’s impressive résumé at boutique hotels and eateries comes full circle: Le Coucou (within 11 Howard, a 207-room hotel) is only a third of a mile from its headquarters, in New York City’s SoHo. It flaunts timeless Old World design features you don’t normally see in an urban restaurant, like a barrel ceiling, pewtered-steel chandeliers of their own design, a moody wall mural depicting a wispy forested scene, and clear nods to Scandinavian design.
Pink Cabana, Indian Wells, California
Designer: Martyn Lawrence Bullard
Celeb Clients: Kardashian-Jenner family, Tommy Hilfiger, Ellen Pompeo, and Eva Mendes.
Playing with a bubble-gum-pink hue paid off for Bullard’s dining concept inside Sands Hotel & Spa, where the cathedral ceiling and plush banquette in this shade shoulder a gallery wall. Other design details hearkening back to the midcentury are cane-back armchairs upholstered with palm-tree fabric in navy, orb-shaped light pendants at staggered heights, and shimmery mint green tiles at the bar. Bullard also designed another Palm Springs project: the Colony Palms Hotel and Bungalows’ restaurant, the Colony Club.
Atelier and The Garden, Munich, Germany
Designer: Axel Vervoordt
Celeb Clients: Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, Robert De Niro, Sting, and Calvin Klein.
At the top of Munich’s luxury-hotel roster is Bayerischer Hof, home to the three-Michelin-star Atelier and The Garden and in a building dating back to the 1840s, created by King Ludwig I (there’s a suite in his honor). Setting Vervoordt loose on the interior design resulted in a fresh, clean aesthetic that bridges modern and historic in the indoor and outdoor spaces through its use of low beam ceilings, pops of warm red on the inside, wide metal pendant light fixtures, and distressed-wood side tables.
Viviane, Beverly Hills, California; Villon Restaurant and Bar, San Francisco
Designer: Kelly Wearstler
Celeb clients: Cameron Diaz, Ben Stiller, Christina Aguilera, and Gwen Stefani.
Wearstler’s work at Viviane (Avalon Hotel Beverly Hills) and Villon Restaurant and Bar (Proper Hotel San Francisco) demonstrates her ability to marry whimsy with sophistication. A sea of pastels locked into geometric shapes mark Viviane’s outdoor cabanas, while the interior’s marble-motif wallpaper and furnishings stick to the palest of blues and whites. In San Francisco, a 1926 Beaux Arts building is a vessel for Wearstler’s signature pre-modernist vibe: horizontally “rippled” dusty-blue walls and triangle-shaped mirrors, plus pendant lighting resembling a dress shirt’s ruffles.