Kevin Thornton's food has always been remarkable, but lately the Michelin-starred chef has struggled to come up with a diningroom his customers warm to. Now he has gone back to the drawing board, he tells Gemma Tipton.
It used to be said that the interiors you saw in restaurants would, in three years, be what we all had in our homes. Perhaps this was true, in their day, of Formica, flock, dark wood, blond wood, cream and chrome: restaurants led the way, and slowly we copied them. But time has speeded up: as soon as a look is considered cool in a restaurant or bar it turns up in Haus or Dunnes Home, and, before you can say "distressed gilt mirror", someone has it in their livingroom.
So designers are going further to create escapist spaces for us to dine out in. At Aureole, in Las Vegas, waitresses in black catsuits abseil down a four-storey wine tower to fetch the bottle you desire. At Duvet, in New York, diners lounge on beds while they eat, although I'm not sure what they do about crumbs in the sheets between sittings.
Ireland has the multicoloured and somewhat misplaced glamour of the G Hotel, in Galway, the over-the-top opulence of the Dylan, in Dublin, and what some describe as the Cupid-heavy "vulgarity" of La Stampa - I always rather liked the Dublin restaurant's brand of gilded, floral decadence. (I don't remember much about the food, though.)
Aesthetic taste is at the heart of the problem in restaurant design. How can you create a space that will appeal to as many people as possible yet retain a sense of individuality? How can you create a diningroom that is new enough to catch the public's interest but will not feel dated within a year? How can you create the sense of both occasion and intimacy that a memorable night out requires? And how do you create a mood that will suit couples on their first dates, power brokers, friends getting together and committed gourmets, all at the same time?
Working out the answers over a typical breakfast of two double espressos and a pot of coffee on the side are Kevin Thornton, the Michelin-starred chef, and David Piscuskas, a New York-based designer whose firm, 1100 Architect, has a client list that includes Harrison Ford, Willem Dafoe, Jasper Johns, Liam Neeson and Christy Turlington.
The problem the pair have been facing is Thornton's restaurant on the second floor of the Fitzwilliam Hotel, on St Stephen's Green in Dublin. For a diningroom with views across the leafy expanse of the green, it had always been strangely devoid of atmosphere - although it was not, perhaps, as cold as people said it was. For those who are acknowledged as successes, perhaps, anything less than perfection is seen as failure.
The room at Thornton's wasn't ideal, but it could be said to be preferable to being squeezed into the overheated and overseated Mermaid Cafe, on Dame Street in Dublin, on a day when the sun beats down through its goldfish-bowl windows. Equally, people described it as a disaster when Thornton lost his second Michelin star last year. It always seemed to me pretty wonderful that he had one of the things at all.
Losing the star was not, of course, a disaster, but it did galvanise Thornton and his wife, Muriel, into rethinking the room. And it seems as if Thornton, a passionate perfectionist, has met his match in his architect. They have, according to Piscuskas, designed the place five times already. "What we found with the room," he says, "is that there wasn't any 'there' there. There was no idea of 'next', no sense of progression."
Thornton says: "We wanted to seduce people. It's about passion, stimulation, the senses. It's the small details that make a huge difference." He describes the carpet they have chosen, which is a rich chocolate colour, some glass panels that have been etched with the pattern of salmon skin (from one of Thornton's photographs) and walnut wood. It becomes clear that he thinks in terms of food. "We're so bombarded by speed that we've no place to relax," he says. "It has to be stimulating and serene at the same time," adds Piscuskas.
As they go on, talking in increasingly abstract terms about how architecture and food can make you think and feel, how both can transport you, how both include an element of theatre, I start to think about restaurants I like. There's the funky grunginess of Gruel, for example, next to the Mermaid Cafe, and the Tom de Paor's timeless interior of Eden, on Meeting House Square in Temple Bar. I realise that, when I think about where I might like to eat, I often think about the room as much as about the food.
The food, of course, won't be a problem at the redesigned Thornton's, which will reopen on Friday, in time for St Valentine's Day, one of the biggest nights in the restaurant calendar. Thornton is an incredible chef. But he is making some changes to his menus. As well as his epic 13-course tasting menus he will offer a low-calorie selection at lunchtime and, for people who just fancy dropping by, a canape bar, where you will be able to sit and have a glass of wine or a cocktail and sample Thornton's little creations for as little as €3 a go.
"We want to get rid of people's perceptions that this place isn't for them," says Thornton. "We want people to call in and have a canape, then, maybe, stay and have dinner, or perhaps go on to the rest of their evening."
It's hard to imagine anyone wanting to leave - although I'm exercising my imagination, because we've left the double espressos behind and are standing in the building site that is to become the newest incarnation of Thornton's. The chef is pointing, describing and being generally enthusiastic about the plans. "We want to give people an experience," he says. "We want to wipe them off their feet with colour, sense and food."
In what was the awkward second space of the restaurant, the canape bar will be "like a garden". Silk-and-wire leaves will appear behind light-diffusing material that stretches out to canopy the ceiling. More lights will glow through silvery filigree. Another of Thornton's photographs will be blown up and hung on the wall.
In the main restaurant the mood will be more modernist. An Eileen Grey table beside a big red sofa in the waiting area calls to mind a more glamorous era, perhaps, than our own. The space will be divided by the etched-glass screens, and a column that can't be removed for structural reasons will be covered in a silvery mesh, to catch and wink back diamonds of reflected light. The ceiling will curve gently up to meet the windows, which, now uncovered, are the best feature of the room.
I ask Piscuskas if it depresses him, as an architect, to see how wrong a space can go; I'm thinking of the lowered ceilings and uPVC windows he found when he came to Thornton's. "Where's the optimism in that?" he asks. "It obliges you to stay very creative. What stimulates me is that endless recognition of different elements: light, shade, texture. You see things and you realise you can use them. The other day I came in and saw the light on the building across the road, and it really caught me."
I'm curious to know what it's like to work with celebrity clients. "They can be exacting - everybody's exacting about something - but you find a way to connect with them, and you work from there. With Kevin it's easy," Piscuskas says. "We have a similar work ethic." And what's that? "Relentless."
Piscuskas and Thornton's designs for the new restaurant may yet inspire a trend in interior design, but the sophistication of their plans will more likely inspire diners to indulge in an awful lot of fiddly, indescribably good canapes.
Thornton's Restaurant (01-4787008, www.thorntonsrestaurant.com) reopens on Friday. David Piscuskas's website is www.1100architect.com