Designing the Oceanic Environs of L.A.’s Cento Raw Bar

In December 2021, Cento Pasta Bar transformed from a beloved pasta pop-up by chef Avner Levi into a permanent restaurant in L.A.’s West Adams neighborhood. On May 12, Levi segued his continued culinary success into Cento Raw Bar, a neighboring location dedicated to tiered seafood towers, fresh hamachi crudo, flavorful squid ink noodles, a clever caviar sandwich, and more. The enveloping interior design forgoes the nautical tropes of many East Coast raw bars, favoring white walls with natural textures reminiscent of spume.

Creative director Brandon Miradi—of Vespertine, LACMA, the Beverly Hills Hotel, and Frieze Art Fair fame—helmed the enchanting design, from concept to execution. “Partnering with Brandon let us extend the same care we give to the food and hospitality, into the design of the restaurant,” Levi shared with Surface. “We wanted to bring something new to the L.A. dining scene for people to get excited about. We hope that guests can come here and be transported.”

Miradi’s high-touch approach extended from the sea foam green counter to the fork selection and even the buttons on the staff uniforms. “These are the details that can accumulate and impact the feeling a guest has when they dine out,” Miradi says. “It became the kind of project where I’m choosing plates for each dish individually or designing them from scratch in the case of the shellfish towers; where I’m making the stools for the space or throwing the ceramic vases myself as opposed to buying them.”

The creative director sought to express details “with a flavor of surrealism and sculptural art,” he adds. “The visual cues are taken from the shapes and forms found in nature around the sea. Using those cues, I anchored the design around the way texture, form, and light interact. This being a raw bar, it was important for me to avoid making direct references to ‘nautical themes’ and instead to be indirectly inspired by nature.”

Crucial to this vision was the materiality of plaster and clay—applied here, perhaps unexpectedly, as wallpaper, sconces, tables, and even as work stations for the kitchen and bar. “I enjoyed using the versatility of plaster to create natural forms, the result being that some people interpret the plaster on the walls as sea foam and others interpret it as the brush strokes of an impressionist painting,” he says, “and that was the goal—for that visual ambiguity to resonate as something specific for each person individually.”

Miradi not only hand-shaped counters and columns and sketched shapes on the ground where the custom tables would go, but he designed the technique for applying the plaster. “I utilized a combination of a brush-stroke-style movement and a new recipe for the plaster mud to finally achieve the layered look,” he explains. “Through that, I was able to execute varied forms on the wall in each area—be it in ridges, corners, or curves in the space.”

Though food is the centerpiece of Cento Raw Bar, design is far more than just the pedestal. They work together to serve the overall experience. Furthering the restaurant’s commitment to design, Max Block and his experiential hospitality agency CARVINGBLOCK produced the launch events—which included bespoke wares by head of brand Cameron Saffle.