Surface Magazine Articles by Laura Itzkowitz

RESTAURANT

An art deco dining room provides the perfect stage for a chef’s dramatic cooking techniques. BY LAURA ITZKOWITZ

There’s a new show in Tinseltown and its name is Gwen. “Hollywood used to have this allure, and I feel like the community can bring it back,” says Australian chef Curtis Stone, whose new restaurant is upping the fine-dining ante on Sunset Boulevard. The high ceilings and gracious volume of 4,500 square feet give the brasserie the air of a grand art deco theater, where the audience watches Stone dramatically prepare fire-cooked meats in the open kitchen. The 1926 building is furnished with decadent materials like velvet and copper that mix with crystal chandeliers and stained glass, a nod to the area’s glamorous 20th-century movie palaces. “Dining out should be an exciting event that

moves the guest emotionally,” says Oliver Haslegrave, half of the sibling duo behind Home Studios, the Brooklyn firm that Stone and his co-owner brother Luke tapped for the project. On their home turf, the Haslegrave brothers are known for creating hits like Tørst beer bar and the Michelin-starred Luksus hidden behind it, beloved Williamsburg cocktail bar Donna, and lauded downtown bistro Rebelle. Lately, though, the upstart firm has been branching out in cities like Knoxville, Tennessee and New Orleans, where they designed an oyster bar for the new Ace Hotel, and now L.A., bringing their end-to-end, holistic process to larger and more ambitious projects.

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ALL PHOTOS: COURTESY GWEN.

Curtain Call

In typical fashion, whatever they can’t find, they make themselves. For Gwen— their largest commercial space and first in L.A.—they fabricated custom dining tables, waiter stations, wall mirrors, lamps, and even the triptychs adorning the walls in their Brooklyn studio. They also collaborated with the Nicaraguabased Maderas Collective on steel, wood, and velvet dining chairs. Stone, known for his acclaimed Beverly Hills tasting-menu temple, Maude, and appearances on Bravo’s Top Chef Masters, sees Gwen as a contemporary take on the art deco era, not just a recreation of it. “The design is sometimes pigeonholed as ‘Old Hollywood’ and there’s certainly some strong themes of that, but it’s not forced, nor The Great Gatsby in nature,” he says. “There are modern elements to the space that give it a unique edge.” Haslegrave adds, “We bring as much thought and creativity as we can to the design to create an alchemy, so that it feels both welcoming and new.” Proof of this can be found at the on-site butcher, which hawks gamey cuts of rabbit and grouse. An artisanal meat purveyor in Hollywood? All part of its next act.

RESTAURANT

Philly Remake

Dish by Chris Painter INSPIRED BY WM. MULHERIN’S SONS Wm. Mulherin’s Sons was restored and designed to reflect its deeply-rooted American history and location in the up-and-coming neighborhood of Fishtown. From the interior to the exterior of the building, we feel like we hit the perfect balance between old and new—respecting the past, yet making improvements for the future. This balance is also one of the driving forces behind our menu, and is particularly highlighted in our veal tartare on toast. For this dish, we take the elements of a tartare and a Caesar salad, both classics of Americana cuisine, and modernize them with a forward-thinking presentation.

To make the Caesar Dressing Using a food processor, purée the anchovies, mustard, parmesan, red wine vinegar, egg, egg yolk, and ice cubes. While the processor is on, slowly drizzle on the extra virgin olive oil so it fully emulsifies. Add salt and pepper, and place in the refrigerator until ready to use.

A retrofit of a defunct whiskey production factory adds fuel to an industrial neighborhood’s resurgence.

20 g 30 g 65 g 35 g 1 1 2 1

Entering brick-fronted Wm. Mulherin’s Sons feels like stepping onto the set of Boardwalk Empire. The turn-of-thecentury millwork leads to a space awash in restored architectural details from its pre-Prohibition heyday: exterior terracotta signs, arched windows, hand-clipped mosaic floor tiles, reclaimed wooden planks, and the original safe door, which now serves as a coat closet. While the historical touches spin a compelling narrative that links to the Fishtown neighborhood industrial roots, local architect Richard Stokes and Method Hospitality cofounder Randall Cook took pains to integrate contemporary elements—like Stacey Rozich’s folksy mural, reminiscent of the illustrations in Where the Wild Things Are—to avoid making it too antique-y. “We wanted it to feel like it’s always been there, but not like you were stepping back into 1923 either,” Stokes says. “It’s a modern version of the original that feels natural; there’s nothing overly jarring that looks out of place.” Cook notes the thin line they navigated between honoring the building’s legacy while bringing it into the present day. “The inspiration behind the design is really the bones of the building itself, but we made sure it felt fresh and not like some Disney World-esque period piece.” To lend it an air of modernity, he collaborated with Brooklyn-based lighting designer Jason Miller of Roll & Hill on globe fixtures, hung next to cinematic

photographs by husband-and-wife duo Formento & Formento to create a dramatic effect; a poured concrete fireplace in the dining room gives the space a sense of intimacy at night, though during the day a prodigious skylight opens it up. When Cook got ahold of the erstwhile whiskey blending and bottling factory in a down-at-the-heels part of town, he knew it could be a harbinger of the area’s budding evolution. Though it needed a major overhaul, its original woodwork was remarkably intact, as were vestiges of its past. Cook, who owns the Roost hotel group, a long-stay concept that has garnered high marks for its refined residential aesthetics, set about transforming the dusty interiors into an Italian restaurant, helmed by Stephen Starr alum Chris Painter, that takes a wood-fired approach to cooking. He ended up with a polished design that raises the bar for the neighborhood, which until now was best

known for its beer gardens, BBQ joints, and gastropubs. Adds Stokes: “I’ve had my eye on that building—it’s basically been abandoned for 20 years—for a long time. It’s one of the most evocative structures in Fishtown, which never really had a destination restaurant bringing people in from Center City.” In October, several spacious hotel rooms will be completed upstairs with exposed brick walls, live-edge walnut beds, antique rugs, and kitchenettes. Guests will check in with the restaurant staff downstairs—a hospitality model inspired by classic English pubs. As he proved with Roost, Cook is especially adept at breathing new life into historic spaces, a method that reaches lofty heights at Wm. Mulherin’s Sons. “What’s interesting about design today is that it incorporates history as opposed to rejecting it. This is a much harder endeavor,” Miller says. “If you get it wrong, it’s just kitsch.”

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ALL PHOTOS: MATTHEW WILLIAMS.

BY LAURA ITZKOWITZ

anchovy fillets dijon mustard parmigiano reggiano red wine vinegar whole egg egg yolk ice cubes pint extra virgin olive oil salt to taste pepper to taste

To Prepare the Veal Tenderloin Place veal on a cutting board and trim excess fat around the outside. Finely dice into small cubes.

To Prepare the Toast Slice a loaf of sourdough bread one inch thick. Drizzle with olive oil and place directly on grill.

To Assemble Place veal and Caesar dressing into a bowl. Use enough dressing to fully coat the veal. Mix with fresh lemon juice, chives, and salt. Cut toast into desired serving size portions and spoon veal mixture on top. Place grilled romaine on top of veal.

Chris Painter is the head chef at Wm. Mulherin’s Sons. To Prepare Romaine Lettuce Drizzle romaine with olive oil, season with salt, and place on grill. Grill until romaine is lightly charred.

A marriage of high-design and cowboy culture is emblematic of a hotel’s location in an artistic Texas town. BY LAURA ITZKOWITZ

The soft Australian sheepskin rugs in the rooms at Marfa’s just-opened Hotel Saint George are the perfect welcome after a day of trekking through the grounds of the Chinati Foundation, Donald Judd’s contemporary art museum. It’s just one of the stops on my mission to capture some of the magic that swirls through this mythical desert settlement, the kind that entices a stylish boutique property to open in a remote locale with a meager population of 2,000 people. Part of Marfa’s appeal is also its most unpleasant attribute—it’s arduous to get to, and that filters the visitors who come here.

The ten-hour journey from New York is draining, though the three-hour drive through the Chihuahuan desert softens the burden. The wide-open landscape and endless expanse of sky attracted Judd to the area in the 1970s; they remain a major draw today. So does one of the unlikeliest culture scenes anywhere in the world. “Judd really filled up the town, and when he died, it allowed other people to think, ‘what could I do in Marfa?’” says Joey Benton, founder of the design and fabrication studio Silla, one of the makers involved with the project. After studying sculpture, Benton

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George and Marfa

HOTEL

moved to town in 1994 to document Judd’s estate and ended up staying. He’s behind many of the hotel’s custom pieces, including a mahogany-and-steel reception desk, white cylinder hanging lamps, and wet bars in the 55 charcoal-hued rooms. Owner Tim Crowley arrived about a year after Benton. Over two decades later, the duo has teamed with Houston architect Carlos Jiménez to restore the original grand hotel, built in the 1880s on the same site. They kept the walls low in the social spaces and exposed some architectural elements, including the beams and columns, but Jiménez says it’s by no means a preservation project. “It’s more an inheritance, but you also have the freedom to manipulate it and make it more congruent with contemporary needs.” For that, they brought in Dallas-based HKS Hospitality to help with the clean-lined interiors. While it’s easy to draw parallels between Judd’s minimalist art and the hotel’s striking chalk-white boxy facade, the connection between Marfa, Judd, and Saint George is more complex. “There was a conscious decision not to make this some type of Judd land,” Crowley tells me over dinner at LaVenture, the hotel’s brickstrewn American restaurant that is lined with paintings by Marfa artists, including Christopher Wool and Jeff Elrod. “We wanted to emphasize the architectural elements without adopting the Judd aesthetic because you might be able to do that in New York, but you can’t do it here where the real stuff is.” The outcome is a tasteful—and accessible—design with classic armchairs by Alvar Aalto, Benton’s century-old black marble bar in the lobby from a space nearby, and handcrafted furniture in the rooms. The renowned Marfa Book Company, which relocated to the lobby, is where a curated selection of Mykita sunglasses and products by homegrown Marfa Brand Soap share real estate with site-specific exhibitions and performance art shows. In addition to his foundation, Judd’s legacy will always be laced with the ideals he espoused: that art lies in the relationship between an object and its environment. In that sense, Hotel Saint George embodies the spirit of Marfa itself.

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HOTEL

BAR

Brown Bag

BAR

Cocktail by Eben Freeman INSPIRED BY LIQUORETTE

BY LAURA ITZKOWITZ At just 575 square feet, the newest cocktail lounge by design firm AvroKo has ambitions that far exceed its size, not to mention its location on the fringe of New York’s insipid Little Italy. All the visual cues—the flashing neon sign pointing down to the basement, curtain made of plastic flaps, vinyl floor, retail shelving, and self-serve refrigerators— signify a seedy dive full of cheap booze. Yet this subterranean spot hidden under Genuine Superette, a California-style burger joint Avroko launched in April, contains one of the most innovative cocktail program in New York and perhaps, by extension, the world. “We like to try to find the high-low line in a lot of our projects, both in the design and also in terms of the programming,” Adam Farmerie, one of the partners, told me on opening night. “The space is made up of the cheapest retail fixtures money can buy, thrown up against

walls that are just existing, and yet they’re lit with the perfect temperature LED bulbs so all the bottles glow in a marvelous way that celebrates the juxtaposition.” The team collaborated with Eben Freeman, who earned a reputation for cocktail creativity at Wylie Dufresne’s defunct WD50 and heads the beverage development for all of Avroko’s projects, to conceptualize Liquorette’s drink program and optimize the design to function seamlessly with it. “The inspiration came from thinking about what kind of bar we want to sit in,” explains Farmerie. “Some of our favorite experiences stem from feeling a sense of ownership, when the psychological barrier between the customer and the bartender is broken down.” How do you execute that vision? Give the public full access. Thus, the bar’s selfserve, pay-by-the-weight concept was born. Grab beer or wine from the Quickie Martgrade cooler, or a bottle of spirits off the shelves and, if you’ve taken Freeman’s class, mix craft cocktails using the tools behind the bar. Of course, the pros on hand can shake up any concoction a patron desires. In fact, the most envelope-pushing aspect is the bartender’s challenge. Each month, Freeman will choose a spurned liquor from the misfits wall—which might be apricot brandy or neon-blue Hpnotiq—and task

bartenders from all over the world to create a drink worthy of the most refined palate. This three-fold program represents a radical departure from the status quo. Farmerie affirms: “We sort of open up the curtains to let you behind to see the stage set, which I don’t think anybody’s ever done.” What drove Avroko to pair a high-end cocktail program with a downmarket look? “Once we started with that idea, the notion of a ‘70s California bodega liquor store that’s a little bit run down became the perfect muse for celebrating that access.” The partners, who are self-described history nerds, did extensive research while brainstorming the design: combing through old Time and Life magazines, browsing books at the indie-driven Strand in the East Village, and watching retro TV series like Charlie’s Angels. They puzzled over every detail, from the black lacquer tables built to store 12-packs of beer to the convex security mirrors in the corners. Even the bathroom is plastered with images of Farrah Fawcett, one of which once hung on Farmerie’s wall. The result is larger than the sum of its parts, but it’s also simply— and most importantly for a depiction of a grab ‘n go—a place you don’t want to leave.

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5.5oz can of pineapple juice 50oz bottle Malibu Coconut Rum 1 ⁄4 oz lime juice garnish pineapple leaf *special tools: citrus reamer

Open pineapple juice can. Use citrus reamer to the extend mouth of can. Pour out 1/4 of juice in can. Insert straw and inverted bottle of Malibu Coconut Rum. Garnish with a pineapple leaf on the side of the can.

PHOTOS: Garrett Rowland.

A new Manhattan cocktail bar’s forward-thinking beverage program comes with a lowbrow aesthetic.

What do you get when you marry bulldog-style cocktails and all-thingsmini together? A Cha-Chunker cocktail. I came up with the idea to do these all-in-one cocktails with smallscale ingredients, but when it came to fitting everything into the mouth of the can, we realized it needed to be widened. That’s when I created the machine affectionately known as the Cha-Chunker. It’s an arbor press that we tricked out a bit and when lowered into the mouth of a can of juice or soda, it widens it. Then I insert a miniature bottle of booze, straw, and garnish or two, and voila. To do this at home, a citrus reamer mimics the action of the Cha-Chunker, and you still use all the ingredients found in a piña colada; instead, they’re all contained in the mini can of pineapple juice. Once mastered, you can do this with all your favorite mixed drinks like gin & tonics, whiskey & ginger ale, and more.

Eben Freeman is head of bar operations and beverage development for Avroko.