Louis-Charles Aka Designs Beefbar Cannes

Atmospheric, upscale steakhouse Beefbar has arrived in Cannes, marking a first collaboration with Barrière Hotels as well as Paris-based interior designer Louis-Charles Aka’s debut project with Riccardo Giraudi’s restaurant group. For Aka, the design began with establishing a sense of place. “It was always about the relationship between natural elements and classic luxury,” he shares with Surface.

One of the most considered vantage points sits at the back of the restaurant, where orange banquettes face across the room. “Those booths at the back are the best seats,” Aka says. “It is not about being hidden. It is about seeing the whole room, the way people move, the energy of it. You understand the space differently from there.”

“The southern light here is extraordinary. It sweeps through the space and brings out everything in the lacquered woodwork. You don’t fight that. You work with it. It sets the rhythm,” he adds. The project’s cultural framing is equally cinematic. “That kind of Riviera elegance, golden, slightly nostalgic, never trying too hard,” he notes. When imagining its fictional guest, he turns to Jep Gambardella from Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grande Bellezza. “Someone who has seen everything,” he says. “Who arrives quietly, observes, and always knows where to sit.”

Music is also central to Beefbar’s ethos, and for Cannes, Aka turns to one track: “Naima” by John Coltrane. “It is measured,” he says. “Spacious. Emotionally precise.” In many ways, this is a metaphor for the restaurant itself. In Cannes, where restaurants often compete in volume, Beefbar takes the opposite approach. Under Aka, it becomes an exercise in reduction, where nothing is overstated.