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The ood may play the starring role when
it comes to restaurants, but it’s the de-
Ingredients tails – everything from the lighting to
the flowers – that make the experience
Of design complete. Since it opened in November
2004, Flatiron restaurant Sapa has received rave re-
views for its décor, including an impressive 25 points
(out of a possible 30) for décor in the “Zagat Survey
2007 New York City Restaurant Guide.” The inte-
rior renovation cost $2.3 million, according to the
restaurant’s owner. AvroKO, the integrated design
and concept firm behind the project, was involved
in it all – from the architecture right on down to the
font on the menu. AvroKO set out to create a unique
environment that juxtaposed French and Viet-
namese influences with a distinctly modern touch.
All the better to highlight the idiosyncrasies of the
28 • Resident The Week Of April 9, 2007
restaurant’s namesake, a colonial French outpost in
northern Vietnam. AvroKO’s Adam Farmerie told
the Resident what really goes into building a restaurant
from the ground up.—Heather Corcoran
1. Onyx BAR: The anchor of the space, this
one-of-a-kind bar is full of contradiction. A
“heavy, solid, stone object that’s glowing,” placed
against light, gauzy curtains. Instead of using a
solid onyx slab, the designers chose to laminate
thin strips of the material, allowing the edges to
show. The result is “an unexpected pattern, some-
thing that you’ve never seen before,” said Farmer-
ie. In fact, the pattern is so new, that when the bar
arrived from the manufacturer in India its design-
ers weren’t sure to expect. They were pleasantly
surprised.
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2. CEILING: Letting a building’s true forms speak for
themselves is a priority for AvroKO, so the raw con-
crete beams of the ceiling were allowed to stand on
their own, as a playful take on the geometrically struc-
tured decorative ceilings of classic European parlors.
3. BAR: The massive mahogany bar is all about pat-
tern, but in a way that reveals itself over time. Custom
made in Brooklyn, varying sizes of wooden slats were
combined to create what Farmerie calls a “staccato
pattern” of mahogany with touches of walnut. “What
ends up happening – because every tree has a different
grain structure, every slat has a different grain structure
– there is a slightly more organic quality. The result is
really subtle variation.”
4. SEATING: The central seating area was created
to break up the large room into more intimate
areas, so the restaurant can feel lively when it’s
packed, and even on a slow night. And mahoga-
ny, with its shared French and Vietnamese roots,
was used again to maintain visual continuity.
5. TABLEWARE: At Sapa, the AvroKO team
worked with owner Brian Matzkow to curate a
table that reflects the rest of the décor.
6. LIGHTING: “Patternmaking is huge in this
space,” said Farmerie. “We wanted to march these
lights down the middle of the space to compliment
the rigid geometry that the ceiling had already cre-
ated.” And with their combination of glass cylin-
ders, steel frames and gauzy curtains, the mix of
rough and smooth materials adds a bit of tension.
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Restaurant Guide
7. BATHROOM DOORS: Found at the near-
by Chelsea flea market, this wooden door was
outfitted with a steel frame to “re-present it in
a different light.” Another favorite spot for sal-
vaged finds is Olde Good Things (124 W. 24th
St. and 19 Greenwich Ave.) and the company’s
Scranton, Pa. warehouse.
8. PLANTERS: The massive concrete tub that
holds four manicured trees is a study in contra-
diction, or as Farmerie calls it, “a collision of
juxtaposition.” Rough, industrial concrete ap-
pears to float on a bed of natural white rocks,
while holding rustic pots. Florist Gabriel Mar-
quez worked closely with the team to translate
the restaurant’s concept into exciting floral ar-
rangements.
Resident The Week Of April 9, 2007 • 29