Like the Italian menu it serves, a night at Canadian chef Daniel Costa’s Olia Ristorante is meant to be savored. However, located within a vast space at the base of a new residential building in Edmonton, Alberta, the eatery required a deft interior vision to create the intimacy and long-stay welcome Costa was craving. After a successful cold call to Vancouver- and Toronto-based interiors firm Ste Marie, the restaurant’s warm, inviting, and well-proportioned design now beckons diners to linger over tagliatelle, saltimbocca, and perfectly paired wine selections.
Olia is one of three interconnected hospitality concepts designed by the practice for Costa within the building’s 7,000-square-foot ground-floor retail space. Its adjacencies include an all-day cafe, Va!, and a late-night cocktail bar, Mimi, while Olia focuses on traditional dining at a relaxed European pace. In comparison to its boldly decorated neighbors, “for Olia, there had to be an energy shift,” said David Boucher, senior designer at Ste Marie. “It has more of a subdued feeling informed by a longer stay, with lights that cast an ambient, uniform glow and materiality that reflects a southern Italian look.”
The interior palette focuses on natural materials in calming neutrals, from the custom walnut or Santorini quartzite tables that belly up to ecru leather benches, arranged sinuously so that patrons never feel they have their back to the room, to the sandy-hued lacquered cabinetry that builds the yellow fluted glass backbar, which is lit to dramatic yet handsome effect. Earth-colored finger tiles lend tactility to the front of the bar, which is topped with a smoother rectified tile and brown-and-gold veined Breccia Bahia quartzite. The entire restaurant has an intentionally “soft, buttery” undertone, described Ste Marie founder, principal, and creative director Craig Stanghetta, which is enhanced by the “ethereal low-level prairie daylight that filters in through sheer drapes” and clerestory windows and sculptural, lantern-like pendants that illuminate the space from overhead at night.
“Light is the biggest design gesture in the space,” Stanghetta continued. “Shape, volume, and texture are all meant to hold it or play with shadows.” The restaurant’s muted color scheme allows such subtlety to shine, visually broken only by pops of hue in custom artwork and additional statement light fixtures.
In many ways, Olia’s design is a counterpoint to the 1970s Italo disco–inspired bar that Ste Marie designed next door, where Chef Costa hopes guests might conclude their evening meal with a high-energy nightcap and a dance-floor move. But it is also a reflection of the climate just outside its walls. “We were working within the context of the environment,” explained Stanghetta, referencing the intense daylighting that rolls across Edmonton’s flat terrain. Olia more openly embraces its city’s natural phenomena while Mimi and Va!—whose green-and-white ceramic tiles and stainless steel surfaces conjure everyday Roman espresso bars—aim to instead bring microcosms of Italy to Canada.
Still, the trio of moody eateries are complementary. Each builds a space that allows both intimate, familiar gatherings and spontaneous meetings at a variety of times of day. In a city where winter is long, harsh, and requires many months of indoor dining, offering such a diversity of experiences within one locale “is also quite useful,” added Stanghetta. While Mimi might feel like a shot of espresso, and Va! would serve you one, dining at Olia offers a slow-food experience, which Costa has studied in Italy to perfect. “Because there’s an interplay between the three spaces, Olia was allowed to be a bit dreamlike in a way,” said Stanghetta, “not fixed in a reference of time nor a design vernacular.”