August 13, 2008

Restaurant Florent is "F ORENT"

advertisement: from restaurant website

photo: ekornblut on Flickr


photo: morbinear on Flickr


photo: eater_ny on Flickr


Sadly I've never been to Florent before it closed a month ago, as it seemed like it was possibly the greatest ever relationship between restuarant and designer. The menu looked pretty tasty, too.

Clever, pretty, unpretentious design -- there's a "Gallery" on the site that features all of their ads. Everything from window graphics to menus to other small details is simply amazing, a breath of fresh air in today's trend of overstuffed, overlogo'd, overbranded establishments (and I'm not even talking about chains).

Backstory: Tibor Kalman of M&Co. designed their identity and advertising and apparently Florent Morellet fed the crew four days a week for 8 years.
"Tibor and I hit it off very well; he was smart, and good at pushing me. For a restaurant my size the amount of advertising that was done was absurd. I was M&Co’s wild account and in return we fed them four days a week, from 1985 to 1993. Since then I’ve worked with other people but there has never been nothing like that relationship." —Florent Morellet

-a