Washington, DC-based design firm CORE has completed Silver, an American brasserie, in downtown Bethesda, Maryland.
Located in a new apartment development, the Flats, Silver is a refined fast-casual restaurant based on its co-founders’ more casual Silver Diner concept.
“With our creation of Silver, we’ve taken the Silver Diner brand to the next level. Silver Diner has achieved great success in the suburbs, but we wanted to take advantage of the trend toward urban and semi-urban dwelling and cosmopolitan lifestyles,” says Robert Giaimo, who co-founded Silver Diner and Silver with executive chef Ype Von Hengst. “Silver is an elegant and active brand extension that also engages our younger, sophisticated, and urban clientele.”
The 4,550-square-foot restaurant is fronted by illuminated signage and features modern Art Deco-inspired interior elements.
“After trips with the Silver team to DC’s bustling 14th Street corridor and New York’s brasseries and bars, we were inspired by 1920s Art Deco design—combined with the best functional elements of a diner—to make Silver an elegant, energetic addition to Bethesda’s restaurant scene,” says CORE director of hospitality design Allison Cooke, who also recently completed Buena Onda in Philadelphia. “Silver blends the best of a brasserie and a diner to create a modern, engaging dining experience. Its dramatic lighting draws the eye of street-goers and adds to the iconic, alluring glow of Silver’s prominent storefront.”
Silver resembles a traditionally narrow diner, with an emphasis on its centrally located kitchen and counter, which serves as a bar in the evening. Like the restaurant as a whole, backbar details draw upon classic diner qualities but with an added twist inspired by Pullman car windows—an homage also evident in the positioning of red leatherette-upholstered booths and banquettes along the windows.
“We took a lot of joy in scaling large Deco-building design features into the small human-scale metalwork details on Silver’s booths and millwork pieces,” says CORE project designer Daniel Chapman.
Interiors center on blue, silver, cream, and black hues, such as in the rectangular motif of the mosaic tile flooring; African Sapele wood elements, which nod to Mahogany-wood tones popular in the 1920s; patinaed-zinc metal finishes with rounded corners and countersunk rivets popularized by industrial designer Raymond Loewy; textural glazed brick wall tiles; stained millwork; and antique mirrors with applied 1920s branding graphics.
Large-scale pendant lights with period-style details hang from high ceilings, adding a sense of warmth along with wood-paneled soffits and low walls with reeded-glass panels that divide the restaurant into smaller spaces.
