hello and welcome to a new edition of design for the times i'm your host richard christopher scary i could say that i'm happy about my guest in studio but truthfully i am getting about it my guests in the studio with me today are two very talented very people that created a concept in new jersey a restaurant and piano bar that i think is exceptional and i really am glad to have them in studio and their names are mo al getty hello welcome  thank you for coming to our show today show is all about decorating a restaurant commercial space about thirty percent of my work these days and many designers happens to be commercial spaces restaurants in particular are awfully fun to do you get to create the best the most unusual surfaces and these days the trends are going a little bit towards the industrial look lots of grazing blacks and metals and wonderful pendants and that some of the things that we did at moes the strong piano bar is an entrepreneur he was born in egypt right for a day and he has a really very interesting story so before we start going to your background let's tell everybody where moseby stroheim piano bar is located hundred five thirty five central avenue inside the best western plus mariel hotel right you're inside a hotel yes you can either enter from the lobby or there's an outside entrance and that's where we're looking in new providence and where is your phone position there and you're also opened seven days correct yes that's correct monday twenty so you sleep at traffic lights right yes that's correct so i want to start with mao and you know i happen to know for a very long period of time but there's a real back story because what does is very interesting you can get a steak and get a hamburger but there's a wonderful mediterranean influence and i think people have become more sophisticated with food i don't know that everybody knows what mediterranean is i think there might be an interpretation of different people of what mediterranean is because it's in bodies other cultures right just other than just the egyptians so tell us about your start you grew up in egypt when did you sort of have a love for food is it something that developed later that time and it was fun you know and it was that exciting so every summer i would go back and they like me very much so the save my job every summer so i would go and this is how the love so i would say having worked in other restaurants i think restaurant tour is not everybody right because to be a restaurant tour you have to be a host constantly kind of like this you have to be up but we do this you know for half an hour and then i'm  you guys do this all the time frame every day twenty four seventh's like being a doctor that on call right so i think you have to really love what you do you have to have a certain personality you have to have the physical strength to work every single day right and you have to be up and positive and u deal with you know the daily life and the staff and the guest and and a lot of unexpected things sometimes you're busy and then in the heat of the battle  a walk in doesn't doesn't work or it never happens when you're quiet it happens when you're busy and also you always have to be positive and made the best out of it and and because you also lead by example as soon as you go out to a nice restaurant and let's be clear you can go there and have a burger at the bar and have a lot of fun but if you go into a nice restaurant like that it's the experience right it's the beauty of the room to tell if somebody makes you feel it's sort of a whole experience i think you guys are very good at that i will say that i eat out a lot and most of my experiences are not good haven't you heard that from other people when they go to other restaurants they'll say wow i found something here i feel welcome you don't need me yeah many residents are go to not good service not consistent where your food is very consistent i could have probably going to push one day and i could have it six weeks later consistency quality you know i'm saying i could have a steak with you or veal chop always consistent things always different but it starts with good ethics in the kitchen and good routine and this is how you sustain consistency also keeping the same vendors is part of good ethics in the kitchen and that you follow the basics want to free and that will result into consistencies and that's very important that's one of the toughest aspects to keep consistency in restaurants a lot of times you go to a place and you like a certain thing very much you go back to order it in the store the only other really different is because either they did not follow the ethics or the staff was not paying attention to the details  or the chef just decided to use ingredient be instead of ingredient that's how how can people do discern that don't try to do serve something they've you know savor to come is different i think they're savvy i will add because i know personally having there are many times you really buy most of the best ingredients the best chicken breast the best bread you know purveyors that are often more expensive but you really buy the best greedier well it's a constant battle to buy the best ingredients and if you do so it translates that means you just like buying the base is solid sure that means you can build on that  if the base is wobbly then you will never that's why we put emphasis on buying the best food from our vendors and the guest knows that the client knows that that we're not cutting corners and that helps you establish a good name and also helps you establish that consistency issue that we're talking about yours the transition little bit about your story that was i don't even know this myself when did you leave egypt and come to america to work and live twenty three i turned twenty four in the states yes you know so once you got to the states were you back and forth to egypt or did you start working in restaurants or food here was the only thing i know so i worked in restaurants by the way you know i took my resume t o restaurants and i started to work in restaurants by the way did you leave to the new york tri state area or were you in other parts of the country and you know i actually moved first to san francisco i landed in new york yes but i had some friends in san francisco and i ended up working in san francisco for a good year really and a half almost and then all my real good friends were on the east coast so i decided to go is yes so let's talk about so your fast forward restaurant you travel the west coast east coast you're learning you're picking up tips everywhere you go where do you start so marty first meeting with you were getting to know this guy i'm always when you started doing catering yes i do believe you started out calling it most california cuisine well i was always attached to california cuisine at the time with was like very innovative ok fresh and they used the fresh county correct and you were in lebanon new jersey correct but it wasn't was it a cafe that was open for lunch because i needed a lucky yeah it was it was like a show room ok we flex our muscles at the caf and then and then we also did a lot bar here the killing was was was the thing back then obviously diminished after that a session then or however that was a huge thing back then you know and we were very successful caterers do you  find catering harder than being in the restaurant were easier than being in a restaurant it's actually a lot easier really i think you're going to say harder because know the physical labor of moving the food keeping the trays everything level you know in the physical having the set up and break down it's a time when i vent ok the restaurant is not a planned event because it's like a live show rains like a lot oh i didn't think of it i mean if you have like forty fifty people walk in the restaurant without forty minutes forty five up and then serve it so it's basically a planned event the restaurant is a lot tougher because it is when you think about it yes so let's talk about your transition from the caf in the q tiring to then you went  fine dining in that same space in lebannon and that's where i came into your restaurant it was such a neat experience most of these really tables were all different was really a collective it was kind of something that really now you see more connected but then you will have your time because you didn't see eclectic and you had these really big dishes and the dishes were current like my moods but it was like a part of the dish that's closest to you is out of the dish and then you have this big dish around it tell me about the dishes because that was really cool well in articulating properly i muscles and and play with the spaces and store to put you know when i go to a restaurant sometimes and the chef puts a main course and it's kind of like a child the meat the  the right right so we don't like that we like just everything to be like like like specific and distinct you know you can see a meat you can see a vegetable you can see a potatoes we can see whatever starch we put you know and that to me gives the plate presence gives the gravity gives the chef a sporting emphasis and he's taken his time to work personally on your plate you know that's true so you have that wonderful dining experience there in lebanon and you had an opportunity a new opportunity came up to go a little bit further north bigger space right working in a hotel yes within a hotel your own restaurant but within the hotel yes i'm sure would have its own challenges because you're creating your identity within another vehicle so yes it has some of the challenge it was basically jumping on a moving train you know and but we had a vision of what we want so  basically i treated the place as a new location sure not as of where i am you know so that was very important to me that i had a vision of what i want the restaurant to be sure and i deleted certain things in my mind too to overcome that we are in the best western however it's received very good rain now and of course thanks to you for for helping us with the with the new the correction and the colors and the image that we wanted to know which really made a big difference everyone right now the concert the restaurant the commas or definitely coming back as we cannot believe that you are in here versus next to the best western though they are very important to us yeah ice and the whole i think the whole experience now with the new decor and the unbelievable food the presentation is just part of the package of the most piece from piano bar can we pull up some of the images maybe one or two of the images ok so let's take a look at this what you guys look that way at the image so one of the things that we opted to do so and initially the restaurant when you first went in you created a concept of warm colors of food colors so if i could describe it lisa i want to have you pitch in on it because you're very much involved in the decor of the restaurant and bringing in a lot of i think would say was a collaborative effort between the three of us putting this together and creating something that still retains most image but is sort of updated version right now so this shot happens to be sort of a well area with the on the bar originally we had a lot of color in the restaurant and it was lovely but it was time for a little bit of a change so we tried to do is create a silhouette that was a little sleeker a little less success stories and stick with sort of a palette of gray black and white but do it very elegantly and these  story right it's a story of a lovely lady here's a story about the valar now if you look at the detail of the bar one of the things you're going to notice is that bar has character that bar is not it's a bar that we just put together but that bar has a story behind it and i think i should let mona lisa probably talk about that i found a resource for them we wanted to create something that was new but we wanted to create something that also at the same time had a history in character and when i was sourcing materials from bars i was in getting wonderful exotic with it's getting to every interesting so i found a resource from all these to take a ride out to take a look out in western pennsylvania and very found this lovely solid walnut bar so that you  speak about the history of your bar now that you're away with pennsylvania and and we went over there and as soon as i saw it basically i knew that i had the perfect fit i'm an old school so i like the old wooden bars and i like that rustic pennsylvania the border itself was early eight hundred but back then they did not have like saddam was like with the stools you can see sure they had a walk up bor these beautiful images of vegetables garlic and things and a plant and i felt at the time because the color was competing you didn't see the beauty of the colors around those things if you couldn't take on the industrial look it could be too cold by itself so you have to have a combination of things that are cool and industrial with things that are warm and i think that was beautiful pictures really poppies you could see in this picture in the restaurant so you sort of see lines you have sort of a he a modern static mixed with this beautiful wood that had a history and then beautiful artwork as a pop let's go to the next i think we're five images and there is the ban situation which is kind of fun i don't know about you guys but i really love the intimacy of the band kat with this with this actually is a is the back of the bar back when we first put it together it was very because the bar back was not finished so what we did is we came up with a paint that looked like the stain and we painted it out and then i sourced a beautiful white birch mirror and then we created a bank at there and what they think that did is created a sense of privacy from the other side with the beautiful bar as it was a little bit of a buffer for sound but also you're on a first date you're someone it created sort of a more intimate space i think you're right yes and i do see a lot of people consistently sitting in the stand like terrible i don't ever want to be sexist or or a judge i do find a lot of women tell me they like being on the if they're sitting on a two top they like to be on the banquette side and i agree what do you think that is i don't know i feel more comfortable  and i feel more comfortable being on a thank you then on a chair sure sure and i think we have one final image i think ok and that is we have a lovely lovely seventeen or eighteen and see how many seats do we have them today with  fifteen sixteen seats and then we have an area behind the bar for more of a lounge feel so there are high top tables and that's just one of the corners of high top where you can save if you're with a group of people and you don't want to face each other you want to face each other you know necessarily want to be flush with the bar another way to dine in the space let me ask you most since the both of them the bar opened do you find that a lot of people are coming in and having their are physically active or because it's a hotel and a lot of people i would imagine travel by themselves well absolutely i mean single travelers they feel more comfortable at the bar second islander stand by itself like randy just come in and have a cocktail or a beer or whatever and then immediately the order some food and they get attracted to the sports events and so on and so forth but there's also a lot of couples that feel some odd reason a bar is is more comfortable for them than a table and we get a lot of couples that just like i know myself when we go out we always look for the boy or so i i think it's it's and the  kind of like you know your you're your looser you know dining room you may worry about the people next to you will be more cautious a bit more reserved humor yes we've got three and a half minutes left i want to cover the most all was swimming in the arctic or can hold waters and it does not swim further down into the when the water temperature gets warmer it does not like warm water sure and it's a fish that we use at the restaurant and we're the only restaurant wonderful and they can go online and they can see the menus are there in fact has had some recent photos done and we're going to have those put on line now hopefully within the next week of our the new design of the restaurant and you're doing father's