Colorful glasses and specific cutlery were chosen with intention at Celladora. (Photo by Justin Chesney)
Beloved restaurants exude an aura: a fundamental essence that promises not only a stellar meal, but an emotional response to it. Fulfillment is coaxed out of the diner through expertly prepared food and drink, yes, but acts of being tended to — even swept away to another place — come into play. In these scenarios, thoughtfully staged creature comforts, such as lighting, tableware, comfortable seating and a curated soundtrack, are imbued into their X factor, sometimes so skillfully that guests don’t even notice.
At Adarra, the anticipation of what’s to come is palpable before you cross its Oregon Hill threshold. Randall and Lyne Doetzer invested heavily in buying and upgrading the building that formerly housed Mamma Zu, one of the most cherished restaurants in Richmond.
“I loved Mamma Zu,” Randall says. “Lyne grew up eating here. Changing things [during renovation] was challenging because we know how much Mamma Zu meant to people, what it meant to us. We changed everything with the thought of making the restaurant our own, and we wanted to make Adarra as comfortable as possible.”
One of the Doetzers’ passions is collecting organic wines from small producers. Storing treasured bottles correctly is the raison d’être of Adarra’s temperature-controlled wine room. Maintaining cellar temperature and humidity levels is key to preserving a wine’s nuances, but the wineglass is crucial to elevating its taste — one with a clear, broad, but light bowl that exposes the liquid to air and a thin rim to push a vintage’s esters toward the nose. Sipping becomes the magic carpet ride that jimmies the genie out of the bottle, maximizing flavors and aromas. For this, the Doetzers chose two types of glassware: the German crystal Spiegelau for wines by the glass and Rona Slovak for bottle service.
“It just feels great in your hand,” Lyne says of the latter. “Breakage is minimal, and look at the rim — it’s barely there.”
Both glasses are scratch- and cloud-resistant after thousands of rounds in the dishwasher, preventing off aromas from lingering in the crystal.
Walking with glass in hand to Adarra’s dining room, Lyne nestles into a banquette seat. “Check out the lumbar support. It feels so good,” she says, patting the bench while pressing her back against the booth. “We searched for comfortable seating that could stand up to a high volume without staining or cracking. I think we found it.”
Sometimes a perfect fit can be purchased, other times it’s made. At Celladora Wines, a 14-seat, 300-square-foot (excluding the kitchen) wine bar in the Fan, owner Megan Lee Hopkins designed the bistro’s tables with her father.
“I wanted tables on wheels that were easily moveable without looking unwieldy,” Hopkins explains. “They move silently. We can completely change this dining room for larger groups effortlessly, on the spot, with only one person.”
The design required trial and error. “Initially the tables were bar height,” Hopkins says. “We wanted a fun drinking vibe. But that wasn’t comfortable for snacking, so we dropped them down to counter height.”
Hopkins also has an eye for dressing a table. Her wineglasses are light, with thinly rolled rims, while the shorter, heavier water glasses are multicolored, adding whimsy to Celladora’s table settings.
“Water glasses are different colors — green, purple — so that guests know which glass is theirs. Once a table is covered with glasses and shared plates, it can be hard to tell. Same for our napkins, which are Indian cotton, rather than restaurant service polyester blends, which are linty. These feel good against your lips.”
She also went with hefty cutlery, chosen for its artisanal look and because it doesn’t retain fingerprints. Each place setting comes with a silverware rest, a feature more typically seen in Japanese restaurants. Handmade, they keep Celladora’s granite tabletops cleaner and prevent the cutlery from coming into contact with frequently touched surfaces.
Hopkins says, “I got the idea from small dinner parties, sharing food.”
Lighting inside Pink Room was key to the restaurant’s design. (Photo by Eileen Mellon)
Intimacy drives the design of chef and restaurateur Brittanny Anderson’s Pink Room, a studio-apartment-turned-’90s-house-party cocktail lounge attached to Metzger Bar & Butchery. Interior designers and Metzger customers Nolan Beck Rivera and Cameron Billinghurst of Studio Tarea worked with Anderson to bring her vision into a workable restaurant space. Lighting plays a starring role.
“She wanted Pink Room to feel like she was having friends over for dinner, cooking from her own kitchen and mixing drinks with them,” Billinghurst says. “It was a cool, design-driven hangout space that felt like a statement.”
Rivera and Billinghurst coalesced the apartment into a restaurant that doesn’t quite feel like one, with easy-on-the-eyes lighting. The designers chose warmer temperatures in the 2700K range — similar to the lighting used in a family room at home — rather than a cooler temperature such as 5500K, which is often found in retail and veers into bluish undertones. Incandescent lights at Pink Room are hooked to Wi-Fi and are adjustable via switch or phone. The pink “service” lights make the room feel more like a party, Billinghurst says, while the cooler “house lights” are bright so staff can clean up.
“We didn’t want to disguise that this space is a studio apartment, so we concentrated on reflectivity so that the furniture didn’t suck up the space,” he adds. “We lighted what we wanted the guest to look at, the artwork on the ceiling.”
Enclosed by sconces, beams of pink light become arrows pointing upward, flattering guests with indirect lighting. Another focus area is the shelf lighting in the prep area. Looking into the restaurant from the sidewalk, it makes the room glow pink, a pearlized view through rose-colored glasses of guests sipping cocktails.
David Shannon’s art history degree plays into L’Opossum’s aesthetic. (Photo by Abigail Grey Johnston)
A rosy view of another era (specifically the 1970s) is what proprietor David Shannon delivers at L’Opossum, known for its over-the-top decor sashaying into last-century pop culture. An art history major, Shannon has built layers of details throughout the room. Easter eggs abound, from the Warhol-printed bar top to the Villeroy & Boch chop plates, each year sporting a different design from the James Beard House, a prestigious venue where Shannon has cooked.
Subtlety is the name of the game for the restaurant’s soundtrack, chosen by Shannon. “It’s music I might listen to in the car, from the ’60s to present day, but tweaked so there isn’t too much trumpet or horn,” Shannon says. “I set the playlist up sequentially, progressing from the beginning of a meal to the end of one. I play about six different covers of ‘Long Black Veil.’ Nick Cave does the most slow and mournful one, while The Kingston Trio does a fast, happy, upbeat version. It’s a song everyone knows and likes without realizing the sadness in it. The covers tap into a nostalgic vibe. After all, Beef ‘Swellington’ [L’Opossum’s most-ordered main] is a cover of beef Wellington.”
