Dinner houses serve design as main course in battle to win long-term success

Nation's Restaurant News, Oct 13, 1997 by Milford Prewitt

At one time having a restaurant with good food and attentive service was all an operator needed to enjoy a modicum of success.

But in the hyper-competitive segment of casual dining, where both chains and independents are deadlocked for consumer loyalty, operators and restaurant designers say the visual appeal of the dining room has evolved into a third leg that separates long-term success from quick collapse.

In assessing the state of contemporary restaurant design trends in casual dining, architects, designers and owners agree that restaurants design has become a vital marketing issue for both the penny-conscious entrepreneur and the well-capitalized regional chain.

With design and related architectural services sometimes accounting for as much as 40 percent of the total development costs of a new restaurant, design has come to play a far more urgent role than could have been imagined years ago.

One designer argues that the physical atmosphere of the restaurant has replaced the food as the leading reason people choose to go to a restaurant.

"Twenty-one years ago when we got started, the most important thing everyone talked about in a restaurant was the quality of the food, the second was the service and the third was the design," says Spiros Zakas, who with his brother, Peter, runs Zakaspace, a hospitality design firm with more than 400 restaurants in its portfolio. "Today it is the total reverse. It's the concept that is so important.

"But 21 years ago all people had to contend with was McDonald's, Burger King and Steak & Ale. Today you have dozens of dinner-house chains with Wall Street money in the market, and there has been this gradual shift. If you have to compete, you can't depend on food alone."

However, Zakas says that in many ways it's the consumer who has dictated the change and not designers or restaurateurs.

"When most people go out to a restaurant these days, they are not saying to themselves, `Oh, I want to have a great pot roast at this restaurant,' or `I want to have salmon at that restaurant,'" he says. "Going out is an emotional question more than it is a gastronomic decision. It's a decision determined by the occasion. It isn't the food; it's the mood."

While many restaurant owners disagree with the contention that restaurant design has superseded food in order of importance, most concur that the design and decor of their places have become key marketing tools.

For example, at the recently opened Payard Patisserie & Bistro in Manhattan -- designed by David Rockwell -- executive chef Francoise Payard and his wife, Alexandra, have brought to midtown a cozy Parisian bistro designed to accent a restaurant where the culinary emphasis is on dessert.

In the front of the restaurant, glass display cases are filled with colorful and artistically crafted Napoleons, eclairs, fruit pastries and other mouth-watering works of art. As one moves deeper into the restaurant, the dining room appears as a warm but subdued open atmosphere with brown wood paneling and marble tabletops.

A balcony with additional seating overlooks the lower level and gives the restaurant a vastness belying its modest 6,000 square feet.

"What we wanted was a traditional French-style bistro," Alexandra Payard says. "David [Rockwell] came up with a warm and inviting room with unique accents to show off what we're about.

"For example, the handblown lamps and scones were designed by him in the shape of whisks. The pastry molds lining the walls belonged to Francoise's grandfather. The hardwood floors, rather than stone or carpet, also are in keeping with the warmth of a bistro."

Rockwell says the bistro personifies the idea of design as a marketing element. Even for passers-by on the street, the restaurant, Rockwell says, seduces guests by tempting the eye.

"The goal at Payard was to create a space that blended an active patisserie with a bistro, and one of the things we did to make that happen was to use the windows as a food display," he says. "The windows are low enough so that people can see through the patisserie into the restaurant and to the mezzanine.

"We think of it as one unified motion. Payard is both Parisian and romantic, clean and modern."

But Rockwell, who has designed dozens of restaurants and hotels and who enjoys being one of the most sought-after designers in the industry, says he believes design and food are partners of one another, rather than one leading the pace for the other.

Rockwell points to Payard as an example.

"The whole goal is to make an emotional connection with customer, and at Payard I believe that connection is real," he says. "The room allows the food to come forward and be presented in a strong way, just as the front display cases allow the pastry to be presented in a bold way."

Like Rockwell, other designers argue that a harmony should exist between the food and the visual charms of the dining room.

Bill Johnson of the Atlanta-based B. Johnson Studios won high praise for his interior design of Pano Karatassos' Southwestern-themed Nava in Buckhead. The 140-seat restaurant fuses a Southwestern cuisine with Southwestern building materials and colors to saturate guests in rich imagery. But despite all of that effort, Johnson says he sees an equal partnership between the food and the dining room.