By Judy Carmack Bross
Seline Dining Room
We asked Chicago architect Steve Rugo whose designs of national and international chef driven restaurants include Alinea, Next, Roister and now just opened Santa Monica’s Seline which EaterLA called one of three of the best looking restaurants in Los Angeles in 2024, what are emerging trends for 2025.
Seline Chef Dave Beran
“Chefs want you to concentrate on what is most dramatic: what is on the table top, plated in front of you. Chef Dave Beran was going for something dramatic and moody for the interior. It started out with a Wes Anderson feel, and now it is more Tim Burton. We designed it around the Chef’s art choices and there are shadows and a lot of black rather than stainless steel throughout to create something different. But it’s the food that matters,” Rugo said.
Principal of Rugo/Raff Ltd. Architects in Chicago The firm has specialized in single-family housing including new construction, renovation and historic restoration and now increasingly in the hospitality business with emphasis on chef driven restaurants. Recent projects include ones for Lettuce Entertain You and the David Collins Studio in London.
Architect Steve Rugo
“There will be more and more about the person who created the food delivering it directly to the guest, providing more of a relationship and experience,” Rugo said. “Kitchens are exhibition spaces and it is the chef and line chefs who are prepping, cooling and delivering the food.”
Seline offers a 14-15 course tasting menu and Rugo says that more and more restaurants are offering three to four course fixed menus.
“As food has doubled in price restaurants can’t afford the waste from a large menu. Fixed price is less stressful to all. Customers come in not wondering how much money they might be spending, they will know up front, and it will be more about the experience. I think the next generation of guests likes this concept and it will spread to all of us.
“Maybe your fine dining experience might be once a year and then maybe your favorite neighborhood place once a week. It is all about figuring out your budget, knowing that I am going to spend on this dining experience. I think this is one of the reasons some people go to their clubs frequently. They have memorized the prices.”
Seline Dining Room
“For the chef-driven restaurant it all goes back with more contact with the chef and their control of the guest experience from the point a reservation is made to when you leave. It’s usually their play list that you hear. Dave Beran also has a bar menu as do many chef-driven venues, and at Pasjoli along with a fixed price menu in two dining rooms. The burger has been described in EaterLA as the best burger in Los Angeles on a bar menu.
Beverage trends continue from 2024, reflecting generational shifts.
“’I don’t want to drink at a wine bar, that’s where my grandparents went.’ We are hearing this frequently. There is a real concentration now on the bar. In the past cocktails might have cost $7-$10 but now they are $20,” Rugo said. “They are an experience in themselves.”
Kitchens are designed for the menus being served. Whether it is at the United Center or a corner pub, the architect has a specific notion of how the menu is done, the people cooking with the chef, it is all part of the experience. For this reason, the chef and his business partners are very much a part of the visual choices, making the image work.”
Many of the kitchens he uses are created in Quebec City, Canada close to Murray Bay where Rugo and his wife Laura have a summer home and delight in the unbelievably fresh produce grown there.
“Chefs are growing their own salads and vegetables sometimes up on the restaurant’s roof. In Rome’s Dogma Ristorante, a young couple has created a black kale that you just can’t go to a farmer’s market and buy,” Rugo said.
Seline Dining Room
We don’t have a culture of professional service staff in US but a tipping culture. It has a habit of creating inequities and imbalance based on a day of the week. Often hospitality was many people’s first paid position. In coastal areas where I grew up, frequently restaurant owners had two seasonal restaurants. One perhaps on Cape Anne in Massachusetts and then another somewhere in Florida. Different menus but often servers were all local teenagers. The kitchen staff were the owners,” he said.
Seline friends and family
Rugo, who does many single-family homes across the country, loves working with chefs.
“Often with homes, someone else does the interior designs. With restaurants, I love putting my ideas in front of the chefs and hopefully they will choose some of them. It is a nice partnership. It happens usually a little quicker than with houses, and with more focus.
“In chef driven restaurants, it is not about building a place to serve food, but about food as art, and creating a mindset as people walk in the door.”
As an only child whose father was in marketing and sales, Rugo traveled with his parents on business trips.
“My parents would travel maybe as much as 30 weeks a year and they would have two suitcases packed at all times. My job when I was in high school was to unpack one bag and take clothes to the dry cleaners. I went along a lot and remember my parents getting a call when I was about five years old from the kitchen of a hotel to come get me. I had snuck out from my baby sitter. I have always felt comfortable in hotels and clubs.”
Some of Rugo’s favorite food memories include the burgers, fried shrimp and clams at Matty’s Sail Loft in Marblehead and the Tom Collins with blue Curacao in 16 ounce cups, fashion shows during lunch at Miller and Rhoads department store in Richmond and the coconut cake at Rich’s Department store in Charleston.
Rugo shared one trend that’s probably here to stay in 2025:
Rugo pointed out that in Palm Beach restaurants during Covid could have had a 100 percent occupancy rate where it is 33 percent in most cities.
Seline Dining Room
“My daughter remarked that at all restaurants there and in so many cities chicken Milanese is always on the menu, whether it is Italian, American or French. Every club offers it too. I guess that’s the one thing that isn’t too daring that everyone wants to eat.”
