Excerpt from Restaurant Development + Design Magazine
The floorplan places the restaurant’s wood-fired oven, dining room and bar in the first building, where guests enter the operation, creating a fun, energy-filled space that’s a hit on date nights. This area features custom solid wood tabletops, a stained concrete floor and a custom-made storage piece holding wine and wood for the restaurant’s pizza oven. The pizza oven itself sits besides a large pasta-making machine. Their location in the front of the house, says Maher, offers the transparency in food production that many of today’s guests want. The oven also serves as a major design element, adding energy and activity to the space. In fact, it served a linchpin of the entire operation’s design.
“The real design challenge was figuring out how to configure the bar, separate the spaces, work with existing plumbing and changes in elevation and how to structure the kitchen. It was just grinding through scheme after scheme, weighing the pros and cons from a cost standpoint, a kitchen logistics standpoint and design standpoint — all the main criteria that go into restaurant design.”
– Steve Maher, principal at Ritter Maher
