Deep-sea themer Fantasea Reef is no 'dive bar.'

Nation's Restaurant News, May 19, 1997 by Amy Zuber

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- Deep-sea dining is raising the stakes for new themed restaurants.

As one of the most recent additions to the "eatertainment" category, Fantasea Reef, a 400-seat buffet restaurant at Harrah's Casino in Atlantic City, N.J., simulates an underwater diving experience inside a coral reef.

But even with a $7 million price tag, the decor of Fantasea Reef, complete with intricate marine elements, was no splash in the bucket to create, according to the restaurant's designers.

"Fantasea Reef was the most challenging for me because it was a theme that was difficult to document and difficult to build," said Karen Daroff, president of Philadelphia-based Daroff Design Inc., the company that created the decor of the 14,000-square-foot space. "Nothing is vertical, and nothing is square."

Before implementing the restaurant's decor, the design team researched underwater life extensively, said Daroff, who is an avid scuba diver. She added that many of the design elements were extracted from actual photographs of ocean life.

"We developed story boards based on authentic details, concepts and images that we found in our reference material with the intent of stretching them to be larger than life, fanciful and sometimes magical," she said.

While most of the design highlights were created by artists, the entrance to Fantasea Reef actually features live creatures from the ocean.

With seven large aquariums -- which are filled with several thousand fish -- built into the walls, the entrance hallway creates the illusion of an underwater cave leading into a coral reef. A ceiling tank in the entrance constantly creates bubbles, suggesting that the ocean's surface is only a few feet overhead. To enhance the authenticity of the decor, the entrance features the sounds of waves crashing on the shore.

The entrance "cave" opens to the dining area, a large space with 24-foot ceilings that was designed to resemble a coral reef. The walls of the dining room -- which is divided into three smaller spaces -- are covered with three-dimensional, curved sculptures.

"Everything is curvilinear and organic," Daroff said. "There are no square edges." She added that she hopes to "wow" customers when they first enter the large, exposed space.

The wall sculptures were formed by a process that often is used to make swimming pools, Daroff said. Wire mesh was placed over the steel structural frame, and then concrete was sprayed on top of the metal. Several artists working on site molded the concrete into various textures, and when it was dry, it was painted to make it look more natural.

"The way it was formed was interesting and expensive," Daroff added.

The walls also are adorned with 10-foot-high, three-dimensional faux sea kelp made from resin and with luminous, fiber-optic sea anemones, which constantly change color, from green to yellow to pink.

Several design elements in Fantasea Reef's dining room allude to the actual ocean life that would surround a coral reef. Video screens depict aquatic plant life and fish swimming through the water. A large mural, which features sea kelp swaying on the ocean floor, is lighted dramatically so that the blue hues on the bottom are much deeper than those on the top -- creating the sense that the sun is penetrating the surface on the ocean. Pattern projectors on the ceiling add to the illusion that the sun is traveling down the depths of the water.

"All of this tricks your eye into feeling that the ocean is beyond," Daroff said.

Other marine elements, which were patterned after photographs taken by scuba divers, fill the dining room. Dangling from the 24-foot ceilings are hundreds of handblown, translucent glass fish, appearing like schools of fish swimming through the dining room. The hand-painted table-tops, which are made from resin, resemble the bottom of the ocean floor after the current has stirred up the sand. The carpet, which is woven from wool and nylon, is also a sandy color but is enhanced with different shades of green to simulate the grassy areas on the ocean floor.

Fantasea Reef's color palette, which mimics colors found naturally on the ocean floor, includes pale turquoise, shades of green and orange, and light neutral tones similar to sand.

In the space adjacent to the dining room is the extensive buffet, which has more than 100 offerings of seafood, pasta, soups and salads.

The top of the buffet counter is made from marble with shades of pink, peach and green. Cast-metal sea horses hold up the sneeze guards. The vertical surface below the counter is a brightly colored bubbler wall -- a system that contains water and air and forces bubbles through a narrow, clear Plexiglas chamber.

"We wanted to have the effect of water in the restaurant without the moisture," Daroff said.

While the ceiling of the buffet room is adorned with translucent coral that is lit by pulses of color, the walls behind the counter feature multicolored lights.

"We wanted every place you look to be interesting and exiting," Daroff said. "What was also very important to us was to convey a sense of orientation and welcome and comfort."