By Christy Marshall
Photographs by Katherine Bish
Carmelo Gabriele and his brother Frank are well-versed in restaurants; their father owns Giovanni’s on the Hill (Oprah’s local favorite). But when they ventured off to open their own Café Bellagio (now known as Il Bellagio at City Place; blame the name change on the Bellagio in Vegas and its attorneys), they opted for a modern take on the Italian classic: no dark drapes, no statuary, not an inch of flocked wallpaper. When Carmelo hired architect Tom Niemeier of Space Interiors LLC, he said that he wanted his restaurant to be an exact translation of the Italian word bellagio: relaxed elegance. Of course, when you’re in the middle of a strip mall, neither word comes quickly to mind—until you step inside the front door.
The floor is slate and carpet, the woods are light (as in the fiddleback anigré coat closets in the foyer) and the bar top is made of concrete. The color palette: muted beiges, browns and taupes. “We wanted to use natural materials that didn’t have a lot of sheen to them,” Niemeier says. “We also tried to keep it light.”
To gather ideas, the owners accompanied the architectural team on a trip to Las Vegas. They came home planning a glass pane with water cascading down its surface and another pane, this one with candles behind it, so that the diner would see the flames flickering from the bar and the wine room on the other side.
The strip-mall location presented its own set of challenges—and solutions. For example, the tinted windows have a band of blue film that works to cut the glare from cars’ headlights.
“The coolest part of this project was that these guys let us design everything—the furniture, glassware, flatware, table settings, carpet, lighting, artwork,” Niemeier says. “It was the perfect scenario for an architect.”
In the bar, they opened up the ceiling to get height, exposing the ductwork, and hung big cloud lights covered in fabric as a means of absorbing sound. The base of the bar is cherry, with stainless steel at its foot.
In the main dining room, panels of fabric fan from the center of the ceiling to the corners. “That drapery ceiling is a lot of people’s favorite part of the restaurant—and it is great for acoustics,” Niemeier says. “That sound has to have someplace to go. You have to trap it.”
A series of smaller dining areas circle the main dining room: a wine room for as many as 20 diners, a large corner booth, small rooms for six (with simple flower vases set into cutout wall niches) and two large banquet rooms. Total seating: 186.
11631 Olive, 314-994-1080
