The 2025 HD Awards Project Winners
Posted on June 4, 2025 · Alia Akkam
CASUAL RESTAURANT
George’s Donuts & Merriment, San Francisco
Through an expansive glass window, patrons at George’s Donuts & Merriment peer into the open kitchen, where the day-into-night café’s signature treat is filled, fried, and glazed before their eyes. This culinary performance unfurls in a revamped 1930s Art Deco building in San Francisco’s West Portal neighborhood that is informed by grand European patisseries. Crowned with a skylight, it mingles a 30-foot-high ceiling with white marble countertops, bistro tables ringed in gold, and two oversized portraits, the subjects clad in full-blown regalia that imbues George’s with a hint of the majestic. “It’s like stepping into the heart of a jelly donut: rich, vibrant, and wildly unexpected,” says Jacob Cross, managing director of ROY Hospitality. “It’s the kind of surprise that makes you smile, a wink tucked into the space.”
Interior Design and Purchasing Firm: ROY Hospitality, San Francisco | Owners: Andrew and Lea Dudam