Matthew Goodrich and his team at local design studio Goodrich created 51 distinct schematic plans for New York restaurant Ci Siamo before he and Danny Meyer, founder and CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG), were fully content with the warm and engaging layout.

Ci Siamo—which translates to “here we are” in Italian—is the newest addition to the USHG empire, “a sweeping, winding space,” Meyer explains, in the budding mixed-use Manhattan West development near the Lincoln Tunnel. Like his classic Union Square Cafe and Gramercy Tavern, Meyer took a chance on developing a new area of the city with Ci Siamo, his first restaurant in New York since 2018. “It’s always been part of my love affair with New York to try to plant a flag in a neighborhood that I believe is going somewhere,” he says.

Manhattan West is indeed on the rise, an atmosphere captured by the restaurant’s nonstop, convivial energy. “I wanted to create a place that would represent the time we’re in. But we came up with the idea and the design before we knew anything about COVID,” recalls Meyer, noting that if there had been an inkling of the pandemic on the horizon, the company probably wouldn’t have pressed ahead with opening Ci Siamo. “The irony is that much of the design here plays beautifully into a post-COVID world, people having a pent-up desire to be with people. They want the social stimulus of being out in public, but they want the meaningful conversations that they’re able to have with the person they came with.”

Before tackling the design process, Goodrich and his colleagues were sent to London, Paris, and Italy to scope out some of Meyer’s favorite restaurants. The dine- around was rarely about sampling a specific dish, but rather observing certain design moments or service elements—how the experience unfolded in a special manner. This reflects Meyer’s music-driven approach to restaurant design. Just as when you put five or six of an octave’s notes “together in a fresh way, it’s creating a new song,” Meyer points out. “Matt came back from that trip, and it was clear we were connected. He understood, he heard. And my love of design is that I don’t know how to do it, but I know it when I see it. I know how to hum a few tunes, but I need an impresario to turn it into real music.”

The upscale restaurant’s material palette includes glazed ceramic tile, forged metal, and marble mosaic flooring

To elicit that hit, Goodrich and Meyer had many conversations, akin to a rapid-fire tennis match, to determine the design path for Ci Siamo, which is overseen by chef Hillary Sterling and pastry chef Claudia Fleming and housed in a sleek, glass-clad Skidmore, Owings & Merrill building. “Danny kept giving examples of how each part of a design can be very intentional and can carry deeper meaning. That set us on this path of thinking about the food being transformed over live fire,” explains Goodrich, pointing out the use of glazed ceramic tile, forged metal, and blown and slumped glass. “We created a palette of materials that speaks to, in a subtle way, that idea of fire being the transformative effect that brings the material to its final form.”

This feeling begins at the façade. “It was important to have almost a handshake or a hug when you came in,” Goodrich says. “We made our entrance sign out of terracotta and there’s a cast glass pull on the door, so the first thing you touch is a crafted artisan piece.”

In the dining room, Colorado artist Meredith Feniak crafted a terracotta mural depicting produce in charcoal

The restaurant’s two kitchens erase “the line between where the team is working and where everyone is eating,” says Goodrich. “There’s an immediacy in anywhere you sit.” Anchored by a wood-burning hearth, the kitchen in the back dining room also stars a terracotta mural dressed in charcoal by Colorado artist Meredith Feniak.

For Meyer, the pair of kitchens calls to mind dinner parties and the place where guests tend to hang out the most. “You may not know that consciously, but that gesture, more than anything, lets you feel like you came home,” he says. “We always strive with any restaurant to blur the line between going out and coming home.”

This is the second episode in our HDTV video series, which offers a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into designing and developing hospitality projects.

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