Toku Manhasset, New York
Toku is a rare demonstration of Bentel & Bentel's restaurant design skills in a suburban setting. It is situated on Long Island's affluent North Shore, in the Americana open-air shopping center, a locus of luxury shops that includes such internationally known retailers as Tiffany, Cartier, Hermes, Ralph Lauren, Prada, and Louis Vuitton. Offering a distinctive Pan-Asian menu, Toku meets a need at the Americana for a restaurant appealing to affluent daytime shoppers, while offering evening dining to residents of nearby communities. Toku also presented the Bentels with an unusual opportunity to design a prominent front for the single-story structure housing it. The architects ingeniously capitalized on the fact that this façade faces north — thus getting virtually no sunlight — countering this lack by extending the front vertically with a tall light monitor. They faced this upper surface with striped translucent glass, which is back-lighted through clear glass behind it to produce a striking play of sunlight and shadow — replaced after sundown with lantern-like illumination. While the Americana is no ordinary shopping environment, the space available for Toku presented the spatial constraints typical of restaurants located in rows of shops. Its footprint is narrow and, in this case, exceptionally deep. This tunnel-like expanse has been divided into a series of dining areas that flow seamlessly from the front to the rear without sacrificing the intimacy of each. An entry corridor, defined by bronze mesh curtains, leads patrons to a greeter desk just beyond the up-front bar. In the next area to the rear, a sushi bar lends its identity to a casual dining area. A more spacious dining area deeper into the space features a "lantern" of fabric hanging below a circular skylight, offering sunshine by day and a diffused overhead glow in the evening. All lighting throughout is supplied indirectly from hidden sources — or by the wall- mounted candles first seen in the entry passage. Materials are limited to those of neutral blacks, whites, and earth tones. Porcelain-white stretched PVC panels on areas of the ceiling serve, as in several other restaurants by the firm, to mitigate the low ceiling height with soft reflections. Post-and-beam frames of ebonized oak — recalling historical East Asian architecture — delineate dining alcoves and an area at the far end of the space that can be closed off for private parties. A few well-chosen works of art and craft underscore the identity of Toku's various zones. At the bar, up front, niches occupied by traditional paper lanterns alternate playfully with TV screens, and wooden monastery bells hang above the sushi bar. At the very end of the long space is a wood Buddha head seeming to levitate against the black slate rear wall.
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