Beverly Hills, California
This newly remodeled steakhouse is designed to take advantage of the existing building shell within the historic Beverly Wilshire Hotel. The hotel’s bay windows inform the new restaurant plan, which features a semicircular geometry, 15-foot ceilings, and generous use of natural light. A dramatic new skylight at the center of the dining room includes translucent glass panels suspended below to diffuse and reflect daylight into the space and onto the ceiling.
The dining room is arranged on two levels and finished with golden-toned quartered white oak floors. The restaurant furniture is designed to allow the wood floor plane to extend continuously and catch light. Banquette seating of ash and black leather floats on minimal wood supports. The tabletops repeat the floor finish with one-inch oak laminations. The dining chairs with aluminum frames and black mesh seats (by Charles and Ray Eames) lend their classically modern profiles to these spaces.
Across the hotel’s lobby, the lounge called “sidebar” has been designed as a more intimate setting. A non-traditional bentwood form for the bar provides a dramatic counterpoint within an otherwise rectangular volume, while the lounge area is defined by an uplighted, raised ceiling. At the south window wall, sliding panels of illuminated steel mesh provide a glowing scrim in evening hours. The lounge is further defined by a 35-foot-long area rug designed by Richard Meier & Partners, and vintage table lamps by Josef Hoffmann in polished nickel creating atmosphere and scale for the lounge’s seating groups.