The city’s most prolific restaurant designer says SF needs to lighten up

Since Hannah Collins Tate launched Roy Hospitality in 2009, the firm has designed more than 300 restaurants, the majority of them in San Francisco. It’s likely you’ve walked along the mustard-and-black mosaic floors she picked out for Delfina or gazed at the lush mural of pink poppies and chocolate calla lilies she had installed at Wildseed. Maybe you’ve sat on the emerald-green banquettes at SPQR or looked longingly at the doughnuts in the curvaceous brass, wood, and glass case at George’s Donuts & Merriment — which just won best casual restaurant at the Hospitality Design Awards. (Collins Tate had the pastry case made by Quake City Metals. “It was inspired by Panadería Rosetta in Mexico City,” she says.)

Collins Tate, 37, was a 23-year-old server at Beretta and studying for a degree in architecture and design at Academy of Art University when she got her first break. Restaurateur Adriano Paganini tapped her to lend some help with Lolinda, which he was building out. Since then, Collins Tate has designed 15 of his restaurants, including A Mano and The Tailor’s Son.

Collins Tate’s designs lean toward the approachable and feminine. She’s a romantic who particularly loves anything layered, old, and European. Not that this aesthetic is being applied to her latest SF project, Quik Dog, Trick Dog’s soon-to-open wiener-and-a-cocktail restaurant in Mission Rock. On a sunny day that made the newly developed neighborhood seem like a freshly mowed, waterfront ballpark utopia, Collins Tate showed me the plans for Quik Dog; the sweeping space is still a shell but is set to open in a few months. 

However, we spent only a little time talking about how she’s going to mix vintage sconces with modern materials like plastic and fiberglass, all with pops of cherry red, light blue and a whisper of pink. Mostly, Collins Tate philosophized on the state of San Francisco restaurant design and how she really feels about neon signs and painted drywall: Not good.

Let’s start with the basics: Why does restaurant design matter? Aren’t we here to eat?

Well, yes and no. San Francisco has long treated food as philosophy — something to be respected, analyzed, and sourced within an inch of its life. It used to be if you had good food and good service, you’d be successful. For a long time, restaurateurs could serve impeccable food on raw wood tabletops under Edison bulbs, and that was enough. 

And now?

Now it’s food, service, and design. Design is no longer the cherry on top — it’s the hook. Gen Z and millennials like myself are from the Pinterest era and the Instagram era, and so we are naturally in tune with a higher level of design, because we’re inundated with it all the time. So you can have great design and actually have mediocre food and mediocre service, and a restaurant might still might be busy.

I’m gonna be honest, this makes me a little sad for restaurants.

Yeah, and it’s not just your physical space. The other piece is that digital design presence is also becoming extremely important. I just read a statistic the other day that said 75% of your guests will see you online first before they make a decision to dine with you.

I just got back from Mexico City, where every restaurant feels astonishingly more beautiful or cool than the next. Why can’t San Francisco restaurants do better when it comes to space?

I think we’re a city defined by tech and engineering and innovation, first and foremost. Inherently, it’s driven by efficient thinkers who are maybe more drawn to a modern, austere aesthetic, less something layered and historic and romantic. But in that seriousness, something essential gets lost: joy. In a city where credibility is often earned through restraint, it’s historically been difficult for places to be both fun and taken seriously.

It’s almost like it’s embarrassing to be ebullient or romantic or over the top. You can’t be “too much.”

Restaurants that don’t make you feel anything are the worst kind of design. Sometimes I think San Francisco has lost its ability to feel. Also, I just think it’s so hard to do business here that people don’t take risks. No one goes all-in, like in places like New York, where Le Coucou is my favorite fancy place, not to mention Via Carota and all the [other Rita Sodi and Jody Williams] spots. Then there’s Gjusta in LA. 

What are some design trends you hope will die a quick death?

Neon signs trying to make you take a photo. Painted drywall — we can all do better. How about wallpaper or fabric or textures, or built-ins or millwork or furniture or art? I think that design and restaurants require you to invest in art. 

Are there restaurants here doing the work?

Over in the Marina, there’s the relaunch of Izzy’s. The new iteration is sleek and stylish, not to mention fully booked for months. Bar Jabroni has this fun, bright-yellow lemon-green color. It gives a Brooklyn-cool energy that could have landed in Greenpoint just as easily as Lower Haight. And then there’s Verjus. It’s a textbook case of brand meets design meets experience. That incredible red lacquer ceiling. It’s not only an unbelievable color, but it’s so reflective and velvety. Obviously Ken Fulk, who did The Battery, is another exception. He’s flamboyant, but outside of SF, his work is even more over the top.

I know you’re about to head to New York for some of the summer. Does San Francisco have anything New York does not?

There are still some historic gems here that I think New York is losing. Swan Oyster Depot is a perfect example. It’s perfectly designed, in my opinion. The stainless-steel sneeze guard — the way the guys working there kind of lean on it and interact with you? The menu boards are old and original and have had the same thing on them for 50 years. Even how close the bar stools are together is because people used to be smaller — a relic of the past that is still part of the experience. My dream would be that every client had a story as real as that that we could then translate through a million little design decisions, right? But, of course, that’s not always the case.

So if we have such tepid design, why do you choose to live in San Francisco?

Well, it’s also beautiful here. I like the access to the outdoors. I might be designing interiors, but the natural world is very important to me. But maybe if I didn’t have kids, I’d live in New York.