hospitalitystyle.com

(June 2011) posted on Wed Jun 01, 2011 EDT

STACKED locale designed by Jordan Mozer

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STACKED: food well built, a new restaurant concept that its backers say melds the best attributes of full-service casual and fast-casual eateries, has opened its first locale, in Torrance, Calif. The 160-seat, 6,300 square-foot restaurant, which features tabletop iPads that patrons use to create their orders, was designed by Chicago-based Jordan Mozer and Associates.

“We wanted to create something entirely new in the restaurant industry—a ‘fast casual plus’ dining segment that would really give our guests the unprecedented ability to control their own experience,” said Paul Motenko, co-founder, STACKED Restaurants LLC. “Today, people want great food and attentive service but not at unreasonable or exorbitant costs. Our guests will have the luxury of designing their order to include exactly what they want and how they want it prepared, and then pay for only what is ordered.”

Mozer’s architecture and interior design for STACKED was inspired by the re-invented, urban manufacturing buildings favored by fashion designers, sculptors, photographers, filmmakers and young chefs. The restaurant design is equal parts raw practicality and surreal imagination, the concept’s backers say. The façade features raw, hot-rolled steel accented by lacey industrial steel sash with a collage of saturated glass windows in orange, red and amber. Door pulls have been hand-carved and cast in recycled magnesium-aluminum alloy and acid-washed.

Inside, guests dine on slabs of solid maple with booths framed in raw structural steel and finished with wood and heavy tooling leather fastened with copper nails. Furnishings include heavy duty cabinets with massive industrial hinges. Finishing touches include hand-blown light fixtures, and an expansive, abstract mural wall.

Later this year, STACKED plans to open locales in San Diego Los Cerritos, Calif.