ways. These distinctions made our dining table exceptionally important as the centerpiece of daily life as well as ceremonial events. We took heart in cooking and eating together, drinking wine (generally homemade), gathering to discuss, argue and laugh together. The centrality of that custom to our lives informed everything we did then and still do today when we design restaurants. Not infrequently do we enter restaurants and absorb the sights and smells only to be reminded of a childhood experience in one or another of our extended family’s kitchens. But restaurants cannot — and should not — duplicate domestic environments or private customs. They operate in the public domain as purveyors of hospitality to diverse communities. We have learned much in the ensuing years about the professional commitments of those who envision and operate restaurants today: How to greet the guest, what makes a good table, what light best enhances the dining experience, where pressure points exist in the front-of-house, back-of-house and places in between, and how to facilitate different styles of service. Since no two restaurants are the same, the answers to these questions cannot be universalized. Thankfully, there is no science of restaurant design. Rather, great restaurants are the product of good judgment informed by knowledge, experience, conceptual clarity and, above all else, the burning desire to ensure there are no bad seats. We have been fortunate to work alongside the best in the business, having both given and taken lessons about what makes a great restaurant. From these experiences — our participation in the development of a new breed of urban restaurants, our backgrounds and aspirations as architects, our personal histories and collaboration with others who have thought seriously about hospitality and worked in the field — we have acquired a broader sense of what architectural potential lies within the design of restaurants. We firmly believe that every act of building is materially and socially consequential. As with other building types that serve the public, restaurants are crucibles for the social practices that unfold within them. They are linked to the communities they serve both outwardly, as communal institutions, and inwardly, as environments of social exchange. If their architecture possesses significance at all it is because their form, space, and materials sustain those practices and nourish the human experiences that occur there. This book provides the opportunity to look back at some of our recent work and to consider it as parts of a whole. Rather than compiling an encyclopedia, we have gathered together projects that offer variations on the central tenets of our work and
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