Hospitality Design - March 2011 - 125
center stage Lincoln Center’s new fine-dining restaurant By Jane Levere Photography by Iwan Baan For the design of the Lincoln, the new aptly named restaurant on Lincoln Center’s campus, Patina Restaurant Group’s Nick Valenti had many goals in mind when he hired Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), the local architectural firm also leading the $1.2 billion redevelopment plan of New York’s performing arts center. Valenti wanted Lincoln “to be soothing, quiet, since many guests are getting ready to go to a concert or the opera.” Another must: the focal point had to be the exhibition kitchen. “If all the world’s a stage and Lincoln Center is one of the biggest stages, our notion was to let chef [Jonathan Benno] have a stage of his own,” says Valenti, Patina’s CEO, who previously worked with DS+R on Manhattan’s Brasserie when that restaurant reopened 11 years ago. Thus, a 60-foot-long, glass-walled, custom open kitchen takes up the central, northern section of the restaurant; the bar occupies the kitchen’s far western islands. www.hospitalitydesign.com March 2011 125