Saloma is a 500 m² restaurant in Miami, conceived from an empty shell. The brief was a room that fills from the back, where every seat has something to lean on and something to look at. The spatial strategy came first. The interior followed it.
Green marble veined in gold wraps the walls and the tables. Forest velvet banquettes hold the room low, rust velvet chairs and cognac leather stools warm it, and brass ties it together, from the shell pendants to the perforated screens. A floor of green, ivory and bronze marble runs underfoot, and olive trees and palms bring the garden indoors.
Before a single finish was chosen, the empty shell was worked through the KYVRE Method: Knowledge, Yields, Value, Return, Expansion. Scroll to watch the plan build, one decision at a time.
A corner unit, 25 by 20 m. The street side to the south is glazed, and so is the west end, with glazed doors onto a terrace. The entrance is on the east side street and a service alley runs along the north. Extraction can rise anywhere along the alley wall. Drainage runs at the east. Sun lands on the south and west glass.
Three groups use the building, and none should feel the others. Guests arrive from the side street, mostly in a 7 to 10 pm rush and many as walk-ins. Staff run between the kitchen, around fifteen tables and the bar. Deliveries and waste belong to the alley, never the dining room.
The briefAround 70 covers, a bar worth crossing the room for, a booth or banquette for most seats and planting in view of every table.
The kitchen runs the full alley wall, under the extraction. Stores and the staff room take the corner at the delivery door. The restrooms sit on the wet wall at the east, beside the entrance. With the fixed rooms placed, the whole glazed side of the plan is free for guests.
Guests enter on the long axis and walk one straight aisle, 1.5 m wide, from the door to the terrace doors. The restrooms open off the arrival, behind the brass screen, and a single crossing through the garden leads to the bar. Staff leave the kitchen at both ends of the bar, serve from a lane along the counter and reach the window side around the west end of the garden. Deliveries never leave the alley side. Guests and staff share only the crossing and the last steps to the window tables.
Instead of hiding the back of house, the bar takes its whole face: 10 m of fluted green tile set against an arched back bar in green marble, lit from within and seen from the door and from every table. The far end, the part that would go dead, opens through glazed doors to the terrace, so the walk down the room ends in daylight. A perforated brass screen and a curved host stand shape the arrival and hide the way to the restrooms.
A garden of olive trees, palms and ferns runs down the middle of the room in two long planted beds, with one gap between them as a crossing. Booths back onto both faces, so the middle tables get the edge they lacked, and the same planting lines the glass behind the window banquettes. The trees rise above eye level while the beds stay low, so the bar is never out of sight.
Each type serves a different guest: the solo diner at the bar, the couple at a table for two by the terrace, the four in a garden booth, the group of six in a curved booth at the window.
Brass shell pendants pool light over every table, and slim brass sconces wash the marble columns. A warm cove traces the oval ceiling above the garden, where a sculpted acoustic panel absorbs sound together with the velvet. The brightest point in the room is the back bar.
Back of house 125 m² · Support 30 m² · Front of house 345 m²
About 4.8 m² of front of house per cover. Generous on purpose: the garden, the planting at the glass and the wide aisle are part of what the guest comes for. The plan is designed to move five measures:
Saloma is a concept project. These are the targets the plan is built to move, not reported results.
With the ratios that hold it together: about a quarter of the area for back of house, about 5 m² per cover and the same seat mix. A second site starts from this plan, not from zero.
A curved bar in fluted green tile, banded in brass and lit from beneath, with cognac leather stools. Behind it, an arch of green and ivory marble frames glowing shelves of bottles and plants.
Channel tufted banquettes in forest velvet curve into booths on a brass plinth, backed by a planted bed of olive trees, palms and ferns.
Green marble veined in gold, edged in polished brass and set with gold cutlery and candlelight, beside a rust velvet armchair on slender walnut legs.
A host stand in fluted green tile and marble greets the guest, while perforated brass screens and tall planters frame the first view down the room toward the bar.
You do not enter Saloma. You are drawn toward its glow.
Designed by KYVRE
