In the early years of his Montreal-based practice, Alain Carle thrived on urban analysis. Although today his work focuses on high-end residential design, he still aspires to ?dismantle the dream house,? as he puts it, by drawing on an awareness of alterity and context. His recent expansion of the New York location of Greek seafood restaurant Estiatorio Milos reveals a similar agenda. Intending to sidestep folkoric traps, he instead sought an architectural and material expression of a specific culinary approach: that of chef Costas Spiliadis, for whom food ?is about precision, simplicity and freshness.
The restaurant is adorned with its share of cultural artefacts?for ?example, immense pithari, or earthenware jars. But Carle?s real interest is more properly understood in less literal yet more viscerally real terms?as though inspired by memories of white, crisp architecture against a clear sky and sea. An open kitchen and fish counter define the New York Milos ?in much the same way as at sibling restaurants in Montreal and London. The materials include white oak floor and millwork from Denmark-based Dinesen, Marmorino hand-plastered stucco walls, plus marble and vintage mariners? lamps sourced in Greece.
We can see this in the spiral staircase that flows downwards from just inside the restaurant?s entrance. A scalloped, sensual cascade of white steel and Pentelic marble, it shows a clear affinity with the raw materials that animate this dining place: shellfish, curds of yogu...