In: Faraway Places

Restaurateur Rose Previte’s travels in North Africa during college left an impression, and the Maydan owner aims to transport diners there with the design choices at her latest spot, Medina. The DC cocktail bar is named after the ancient walled centers of many cities in the Maghreb, and inspired her to rebuild the now-closed Bedouin Tent dining space she’d set up at Compass Rose. Previte got to work collecting rugs, heavy fabrics, Tunisian tiles, and imported lamps to deck out the new space. “It’s meant to make you feel like you just walked into a casbah or covered market,” she says. Previte collaborated with a local stage designer on the project, and the result is as immersive as a movie set.

In: Personal Storytelling

Kevin Tien’s restaurant-­design firm is named Kevin Tien. That’s because for the latest iteration of Moon Rabbit, the chef’s most personal and ambitious restaurant yet, no one knew how to tell the story of a first-generation Vietnamese chef from Cajun country better than he did. The newly opened Penn Quarter dining room’s built-in bookcases are filled with tchotchkes: worn cookbooks, family heirlooms, stuffed animals from Tien’s childhood, and framed drawings by his son. “Everything on the plate is very important, but I like to sit back and take in all of the ambience as a whole and try to see the story behind the business,” Tien says. “That adds a lot.”

In: A Giant Party

Navy Yard’s sprawling Royal Sands Social Club is such a convincing simulacrum of an outdoor pool party that it actually seems to fool some guests. “What time does the pool fill with water?” co-owner Fritz Brogan reports hearing from a customer. Unfortunately, the sunken blue-tile zone around one of the club’s three bars only looks like you can dive into it. That’s just one of the Florida-­inspired bar’s zany touches that designers John Gardner, Francisco Beltran, and Michael Francis used to recreate a subtropical escape. There are palm trees, portholes, and bathrooms made to look like beachfront changing rooms. Plus, the DJ booth is a “lifeguard tower.”

In: Homey, Comfortable Furniture

Restaurants usually prefer the chair that’s going to last ten years. But that almost certainly means it’s going to be hard, uncomfortable, and commercial-­looking. Lately, though, Griz Dwight of GrizForm Design Architects is seeing more restaurants prioritizing comfort: “We’re trying to work a lot more softer things into our projects—pillows, couches, things that you wouldn’t normally see in a restaurant.” Take the living-room-like lounge at the new Tysons Tex-Mex restaurant Ometeo, with its dark-green leather couch-es, vintage hand-carved side tables, and desert-hued throw pillows in woven leather, suede, and hair-on-hide. “My couch at home is pretty comfortable, but my food isn’t nearly as good,” Dwight says. “So it’s nice to combine those two things when you go out.”

In: Maximalism

Many of the restaurants opening now were conceptualized at a time when people were finally breaking out of their Covid bubbles and ready to party. The result: a more-is-more mentality. Perhaps one of the best examples is El Presidente, Stephen Starr’s Mexican restaurant in the Union Market District. A diorama over the bar features sculpted sea creatures and taxidermy coyotes and monkeys, while a “theater room” is set like a stage with burgundy drapes and a mountainscape mural. Says Starr: “The charge I gave to the interior designers was that I wanted this thing to be whimsical, theatrical—very theatrical—and a bit eccentric.”

In: The ’90s (Still)

Mall food courts, Pizza Hut booths, and cavernous arcades were the design cues behind Nighthawk Brewery & Pizza in Pentagon City, a joint effort between chef Johnny Spero and the folks behind Aslin Brewing Co. Co-owner Scott Parker, who worked with the architecture firm 3877 on the vibrant space, says there’s a reason ’90s nostalgia is hanging on: “It’s the coming-­of-age thing—the people that grew up in the ’90s are now starting businesses. This feels like you’re in an arcade. It makes you feel young.”

In: Jewel Tones

Is there a happy medium between maximalism and minimalism? If so, it looks a lot like Aventino, the brand-new Roman arrival in Bethesda from the team behind DC’s Red Hen and All-Purpose. The dining room, designed by Griz Dwight, is full of saturated colors—lush greens, midnight blues—that are bright but restrained. The perforated-­brass shelf over the bar is the main character in the room, providing a contrast with the emerald-green bar itself. “It has one of those great wow moments when you walk in,” Dwight says. “The whole thing glows green. It just kind of sets the tone. Maybe that’s your Instagram moment.”

In: A Jungle of Plants

Plants and greenery are nothing new in the world of restaurant design. But Surreal, Enrique Limardo’s avant-garde diner in Crystal City, takes its botanical obsession to the next level. The tropical-­plant-filled, glass-enclosed space—surrounded by a park—was developed by Limardo’s Seven Reasons Group and OOAK Architects, which wanted to blur the boundary between indoor and outdoor space. When the weather improves, you’ll be able to blur that line, too: Grab a cocktail from the bar, then sip it in the park.

In: Designing With Vibe, Not Just Instagram Pics, in Mind

At the Lebanese Mexican restaurant Vera in Ivy City, cacti, cinder blocks, and hanging ropes set a desert-­party scene. Meanwhile, the downtown cocktail lounge Grazie Mille channels a moodier backdrop with its copious candles and velvety blue booths. “We’ve seen people move away from taking a picture of one particular design element,” says Allison Cooke of Core Architecture + Design. Rather, with the rise of Instagram reels and TikTok, diners are more likely capturing the whole scene, from the food to their friends. Cooke is seeing clients now seeking soft glow lighting—“almost foolproof, like you can’t take a bad photo in the space.”

In: The Conversation Piece

Ask just about any restaurant designer and they’ll tell you they’re totally over the cutesy neon quote signs that have become ubiquitous Instagram bait. But they’re still seeking that distinctive piece that everyone’s going to be sharing and talking about. At Shaw’s new cocktail and sandwich spot, Your Only Friend, it’s a stained-glass artwork above the bar praising the sandwich. The piece, custom-made by New Orleans–based Solid Space Glass, looks like a family crest. But instead of, say, a shield and an olive branch, there’s bacon, bread, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, and a holy jar of Duke’s mayo. Designer Brian Miller of Edit at Streetsense says the idea was inspired by the knockoff Tiffany lamps and handmade signs found in classic American taverns. “It’s like the ‘angels sing’ kind of moment,” the bar’s co-owner, Sherra Kurtz, says. “This is how much we love sandwiches.”

Four Trends That Designers Are Over

Plastic Greenery

“The fake plants and fake flowers. We understand why they’re doing that–in DC it’s hard to maintain green and floral elements in winter. But sometimes it’s done a little too much.”

–Francisco Beltran, SAINT

Rustic Timber

“Barn wood. You can only have so much barn wood.”

–Peter Hapstak, HapstakDemitriou+

Fake Productions

“We’ve seen a lot of stuff that’s a little too Disney. It’s just the things that look fake. You walk into restaurants like, ‘Oh, I just ended up in Cuba and let’s all pretend.’ We all know we’re not in Cuba.”

–Griz Dwight, GrizForm Design Architects

Unflattering Lighting

“Terrible lighting. The energy code is driving you to LED lighting, and almost 100 percent of LED is very finicky. It does not like to dim to warm. I’ve been in a lot of restaurants around town where it’s dim light, but it’s like gray, dead light. It’s awful.”

–David Tracz, 3877

Neon Signs, Ranked!

From iconic to cringey

Rose’s Luxury

717 Eighth St., SE

Boogy & Peel

1 Dupont Cir., NW

L’Ardente

200 Massachusetts Ave., NW

Duck Duck Goose

2100 P St., NW

Urban Roast

916 G St., NW

Meokja Meokja

9619 Fairfax Blvd., Fairfax

This article appears in the March 2024 issue of Washingtonian.