Even if you’ve never eaten in one, chances are you’ve heard of Dekar Design’s restaurant projects. The firm, led by Dolores Suarez and Caroline Grant, is responsible for the interiors of some of New York’s buzziest eateries, including hard-to-get-into spots like By Chloe, Benoit, Claudette, and Rosemary’s. Their latest venture: Rosemary’s Pizza, an offshoot of the popular West Village restaurant specializing in New Yorker’s Italian meal of choice. Though all of their projects boast superb food, they also have another unifying (and alluring) factor – cozy, layered interiors that feel inviting and refreshingly un-restaurantlike. There’s a reason for that.
“When we approach a commercial space, we start as we would a home,” says Suarez. She and Grant, who have known each other since they were children, began their firm doing residential interiors, and carried over the same penchant for the comfortable and the unique to their restaurant projects. (A previous shared career in decorative painting is also evident in their careful attention to texture.) “When you come into our restaurants, we want you to feel like you’re in someone’s house,” Grant explains. “That’s what makes it a more transportive experience.” Days after the opening of Rosemary’s Pizza (which is already racking up rave reviews), AD PRO chatted with Grant and Suarez (the latter calling in from a vacation in France) to learn more about how they execute their uniquely welcoming style in some of the country’s most highly trafficked spaces.
Above: Caroline Grant and Dolores Suarez of Dekar Design in their newest restaurant project, Rosemary’s Pizza. Top: A chef at work at Rosemary’s Pizza.
Photo: Danielle Adams
On Space-Specific Design
“We always take direction from the bones of a space,” says Suarez of the duo’s approach. “If it’s an old townhouse, we embrace that and expose the brick, or use an old fireplace.” Grant agrees: “You always want to find what the bones are and then accent and accentuate that – it feels more authentic that way, and you don’t get gimmick-y or theme-y.”
On Mixing and Matching
Variation is the most important part of Dekar’s layered style. “We’ll never use the same light throughout a space, just as we’d never do it in someone’s home,” Grant says. Instead, they’ll select different fixtures or floorings for various areas, adding visual interest while also helping to define different spaces. At Rosemary’s Pizza, the main dining space has reclaimed wood floors, while the entry and wine bar use tile. “People usually use the same flooring and lighting to create a certain look,” Suarez explains. Dekar’s look, though, is that lack of uniformity – which, as Grant and Suarez see it, also means a lack of any blah square footage. “We’ll use different tables or a swing-arm sconce to make even the nooks and corners special,” Suarez says. “We have a philosophy that there’s no bad seat in the house.”
On Meeting Commercial Standards
Of course, restaurant projects present a whole different (and very specific) set of demands than residential interiors, which see only a fraction of the traffic and usage. “We’d want to have a banquette with a fabric in a restaurant like we would in a home and we’d run into the issue of how to make that fabric commercial grade quality, to hold up to fire codes, to be durable, stain proof,” Suarez says. The duo ran into the same dilemma with cement tile which, Suarez notes, “has been popular for many years because they come in fantastic colors and patterns and are relatively affordable but they’re not very commercially sound – they stain quite easily.” So, Suarez and Grant set out to solve that problem on their own, developing lines of commercial-grade fabric and cement-style tile made from the far more durable porcelain. “In terms of looking at durability, we have to come at it from every angle without sacrificing aesthetics,” Suarez says.
Dekar-designed tile at Claudette.
Photo: Courtesy of Dekar Design
Another big difference between commercial and residential design? For one the client is an individual or family; for the other (especially at restaurants as popular as the ones Dekar works on), it could be a whole city. As such, research is paramount, say Suarez and Grant. “We did a project in Houston for example, and before we got to work, we toured 20 of their competitors to get a sense of the aesthetic, the clientele, the energy of the city,” Grant recalls. “It’s so important to understand different customers because different things are important in different places. In New York, you don’t mind being kind of squeezed in somewhere; in Texas they basically have these big armchairs as dining chairs. They have four feet between tables!”
That said, both designers are quick to note that there’s a difference between being informed about your location and trying too hard to conform to it. “Making something timeless and somewhat placeless is so important,” Suarez says. “For example, right now I’m in Brittany, France. We would never want to just take the look here and transplant it somewhere. If you do that, it feels gimmicky, a little Disneyland.” In fact, that attitude was another player in their product design. “We couldn’t find a tile that was placeless,” Suarez recalls. “It either felt too Moroccan or Portuguese or traditional English, so we came up with a design that felt vintage without it screaming any particular country.”
A banquette at Bobo.
