Lesa —
Lesa is the latest venue from the renowned team behind Embla and The Town Mouse. Their newest venture, which sits atop Embla, needed to feel unique from its sibling but share its warmth and natural elements speaking to the restaurateurs’ love for honest wine and food.
The restaurant stands out against the city streetscape with bold letters waterjet cut out of speckled terrazzo. The material we chose speaks to the terroir of Lesa’s diverse wine list and echoes the unpolished concrete at the base of the staircase leading up.
For the wine list, menus and business cards we crafted a unique hand sculpted curved emboss that added depth and alluded to old world hospitality.
Lesa shares a number of letterpress coasters with its sister restaurant downstairs, Embla, featuring illustrations by Michel Tolmer and Andy Murray.
Lesa oozes charm and ease. To show this off we designed and built a website that feels like papers shuffling on a table and used a palette of earthy browns and creams. To add life, we worked with the talented Andy Murray in creating an animated rendition of the building and its daily goings-on.
We seek to create a holistic environment that focuses not just on food but also beverage, service, architecture, design and culture, and working with someone like Suzy has been extremely helpful in establishing our overall ‘brand experience’. We have a slightly ‘off-beat’ way of doing things and so valued Suzy’s ability to understand what we were trying to do, and how design should fit into the overall package.
The restaurant environment can be a challenge for good design as materials have to be carefully selected so that they can endure constant use. Suzy understood the importance of usability and function as primary considerations in the design process.
We have continued to use Suzy for each new project as she has nailed the mood of our culture, which is slick, but not over designed, and needs to feel like it’s made by hand. Importantly each project has been designed individually, so that they do not look like recreations or modifications of each other. For each element Suzy has drawn on a wide and varied range of makers to producer each element and we have found all of them to be experts in their field. Tellingly they all seem to be incredibly proud of the work they have done on our projects and present them as ideal examples of their own talents.
Despite planning our restaurants for many years, we always seem to be in a hurry when the design stage comes around. I’m sure Suzy hates me for it, but she is very good at working to a high standard and at pace when necessary and has pulled her team together to get the job done within the required time frame.
We’ve had a lot of fun adding some often frivolous elements to the various restaurants that are humorous and add a unique personality to each restaurant. I really enjoy working with Suzy, will continue to do so for future projects, and happily recommend her work to anyone seeking something that does more than just look good.”
— Christian McCabe, Owner of Embla, Lesa, The Town Mouse and Principal Wine