While the overall expectation of quality is still very high, food is becoming more casual and restaurant design is becoming more important, says Bob Puccini, president/CEO of San Francisco-based restaurant consultancy The Puccini Group.

“There is a need and expectation for higher-quality looking restaurants,” Puccini says. “You can’t just give people a white box anymore and expect they will be happy with it.”

“The interior design piece is a critical ingredient to the overall process” of creating a successful restaurant concept, adds Matthew Von Ertfelda, vice president, restaurants and bars for Marriott International. “You get so much if you get a great designer on board. You not only get innovative design and materials, but you also get intelligent space planning.”

As many medium-sized hotels look to consolidate multiple F&B outlets into one all-day dining restaurant, designers play an even more important role, as they now are tasked with creating ultra-flexible spaces that are like chameleons—able to change their look from daypart to daypart, to fight people’s natural disinclination to have two or three meals in the same venue.

Lighting is the key element used to accomplish this, but furniture, fixtures and finishes are other elements that can make important contributions.

Building a multifaceted, “smart” restaurant can be as simple as using elevation or decorative elements to segment a broader space, Von Ertfelda says, allowing for sections to be closed off when not in use without the presence of hard partitions such as walls or railings. A sectionable space with natural partitions also allows for revenue-generating opportunities throughout the day, like private parties or events.

Try simple things like having curtained windows or lighting on dimmers to create a bright, inviting space for breakfast, and more subdued lighting for later in the day. That can “completely change the environment so the identity feels different and new when people come back for lunch or dinner,” Von Ertfelda adds. He mentions the use of direct versus indirect lighting, candles, backlighting and uplit curtains all as tools that can have a dramatic effect.

In addition, more casual finishes can keep a space from feeling stiff during breakfast and lunch without compromising dinner traffic, as today’s dinner guests—who are often younger and lead more casual lifestyles—don’t mind less-than-formal dining rooms.

“What I am seeing on a global scale is that there is sort of a more human element being added to restaurants, rather than the artificial, high-end, pretentious restaurants,” Puccini says. “There are more people doing things with more accessibility to the common man.”

Even communal tables used to support breakfast buffets are becoming more interesting for diners looking for a social experience, and, therefore, more widely accepted at dinner.

“People enjoy being with other people,” Puccini explains. “In hotels particularly, there are so many single people traveling that they don’t want to just sit at a table—there is a certain amount of humiliation that comes with sitting at a table by yourself.”

The following two restaurants—one a space conversion and the other a new-build—are examples that follow these formulas for success for all-day dining venues.

YEW restaurant + bar, named for the indigenous Pacific yew tree, is a tribute to its locale. Designed to express the duality of Vancouver, the 204-seat restaurant captures the dramatic essence of British Columbia’s natural environment while also expressing the urban edge of the city. Wood, stone and other natural materials abound in a clean-lined, contemporary atmosphere.

Lofty 12-m (40-ft.) ceilings reach to the sky, and the wood-paneled walls and floor-to-ceiling sandstone fireplace emanate warmth and comfort. A communal table for 14 is made from a slab of hand-hewn western maple, while the sky-lit private dining room is encased in glass.

“The physical design of the restaurant combines sophisticated urban with the natural beauty of British Columbia,” says Executive Chef Rafael Gonzalez, whose menu is consistent with that vision, featuring sophisticated and dramatic food while keeping a focus on the integrity of flavor.

“You should see pictures of what [YEW] used to be,” says Jennifer Johanson, CEO of San Francisco-based EDG, which designed the restaurant. “It was a 30-year-old atrium space open to a balcony above, completely open to the lobby and a hall going down to the ballrooms. They were cooking out of basically a hot plate in a gazebo. The Four Seasons was using the space as a three-meal restaurant, but it was very poorly attended at dinner.”

Johanson helped turn that around by creating a restaurant with a large open kitchen that draws in locals and guests alike, regardless of daypart. The high ceilings and skylight are inherited elements from the atrium that help express the essence of the British Columbia environment, but EDG balanced that with a sense of containment to give the space the feel of a restaurant rather than that of a lobby (no one wants to eat dinner in the lobby, Johanson notes).

Easing the space’s transition from breakfast and lunch to dinner is the amount of natural light present, Johanson notes. “Daylight helps you make that transition—it is infused with daylight in the day, but when it’s dark, it has a totally different feel because the ambient and dramatic lighting added dominates.”

To make YEW a destination dining venue, the restaurant is outfitted with various key features and focal points, the first and foremost being the open kitchen. All of the restaurant’s seating focuses on the kitchen, which runs the length of the room and becomes a sort of theater for guests. “We always like to make the kitchen the star,” Johanson says. “It is very stimulating; it smells great and it’s exciting.” Other focal points that help break up the long, linear space are the stone fireplace and glass-encased private dining room.

Another key feature soon to be ready is the outdoor “living wall,” a sort of vertical garden displaying more than 20 varieties of plants that guests will see as they look out through the glass wall running the length of the restaurant behind the bar.

And speaking of the bar, an additional strategy used to help YEW span all dayparts is for the restaurant’s bar to double as an espresso/cappuccino bar in the mornings. “No one wants just plain coffee anymore,” Johanson notes.

So the restaurant partnered with a local coffee company and brought in people to train the staff to be true baristas, and now the venue offers a continental breakfast with full coffee service in the bar and a full breakfast in the dining room. “[The coffee bar] keeps people from going down the street to Starbucks,” Johanson says.

Finally, the new restaurant, even at dinner, feels approachable, not overly elegant. “It’s more casual than Four Seasons typically delivers,” Johanson says. “It still is high quality, but the lines are more streamlined, and there are no tablecloths, pulling it down a little from super-formal. It’s more relevant to how people live these days.”

Anise, on the lobby level of the new InterContinental Dubai Festival City, features seating for 244 including an outdoor terrace. The all-day dining restaurant was designed by Tokyo-based Super Potato, using a forest-and-ice theme with 10-m (33-ft.) ceilings featuring multiple skylights.

Much like YEW, Anise was built in what was originally meant to be a lobby area, says Stuart Nielsen, director of food and beverage, Dubai Festival City. But the newly opened hotel recognized the need for an all-day dining restaurant early on, and then spent nearly 18 months making it into something special.

Super Potato’s design mandate was to make the three-meal venue interactive and visually interesting. To do so, the firm designed a buffet-style restaurant with eight live-cooking action stations, putting guests more or less in the kitchen, as they receive food directly from the chefs. And for people who can’t get enough of the chefs whirling and pots, pans and food flying, the restaurant also offers glass-enclosed private dining space inside the actual kitchen area.

But perhaps as much of a focal point as the open kitchen is the forest-and-ice theme carried throughout the large space. Super Potato used the natural materials of wood and glass to bring to life a frosted forest of sorts, centering on a 10-m (33-ft.) tall petrified tree with raindrops falling from the branches (in the form of wire cables). The tree is uplit to make it shimmer as though actual rain were coming through it.

The forest theme is continued with another private dining space in the center of the restaurant, a wooden circular table surrounded by 7-m (23-ft.) tall pieces of raw timber.

As for the restaurant’s ability to move seamlessly from daypart to daypart, once again layered lighting plays the key role. Four skylights all feature electric blinds that can be adjusted to allow for cheerful daylight at breakfast or no light at all during dinner, when a sensual feel is brought on via special drop chandeliers that showcase various colors and themes.

Direct comments to: derek.gale@reedbusiness.com

Anise, the forest-and-ice themed restaurant at the InterContinental Dubai Festival City, incorporates natural materials, varied seating and many types of lighting to make for different looks throughout the day.

YEW restaurant + bar, with its high ceilings and wood-and-stone finishings, channels the essence of British Columbia. The former atrium space allows for a soaring fireplace that gives diners both a focal point and a sense of warmth and comfort. The bar, meanwhile, doubles as a morning espresso bar, keeping the restaurant busy throughout the day.

These images illustrate how different the same restaurant can look from one daypart to another. At Anise, the skylights feature electric blinds that can be adjusted to allow in cheerful daylight or to block out brightness for a more sensual feel. Color-changing chandeliers add to the restaurant’s chameleon-like capabilities.