Paula Nino

​ What we love about The Lost & Found Saloon's interior is its quirk, charm and personality. With its cowboy inspired décor, it looks like something that could come out of a Western save the flat-screen TVs behind the bar showing surfing movies.

The design is the work of the four founders of Lost & Found, said Ken Bercel, now the restaurant's sole owner.

"We all wanted to have something Western here and we thought Miami needed something fresh," Bercel told Short Order. "We wanted something stylish, Western, comfortable and good."

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Area 31's interior is one of understated elegance. Subtle details like iron spherical chandeliers and wood ceiling beams and furniture enhance the mostly beige, clean-lined room on the 16th floor of the Epic Hotel designed by Cheryl Rowley.

Adam Larkey Photography

Area 31's private dining room.

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Photo by Andrew Meade

​Sugarcane Raw Bar & Grill has received a lot of praise for its food since opening  in Midtown Miami, but there's also something to be said about its unique architecture.

Designed by award-winning firm CetraRuddy, the 4,200-square-foot interior was inspired by South America's colonial, Spanish-style architecture. We love the restored wood floors, wallpaper, antique mirrors, large ceiling fans and walls with peeling layers of paint that give the space a vintage feel. We also delight in the open kitchens and the robata and raw bars, which were custom-designed of wood inset and decorated with colorful tiles. Seating around each bar allows diners to watch the activity of the kitchens.

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The festive ambience that characterizes Tap Tap starts outside, where a colorful, painted bus usually sits welcoming you to the restaurant. Inside the restaurant, everything serves as a canvas. From the bright blue floors decorated with yellow motifs, to walls that depict bright, colorful scenes of Haitian life.

Jacob Katel

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You wouldn't expect the interior of a restaurant housed inside an Italian home design showroom not to be cool. Fratelli Lyon's décor is sleek and industrial with clean-lined furniture, flatware and decorative accents from the Driade store.

​Orange place mats and tables and chairs provide a pop of color against the muted background of whites, metals, dark wood and wicker. Behind the white, granite bar, wines are stored in metallic shelves that also acts as a divider between the front and back dining rooms.

Concrete columns and metallic lamps add to the industrial feel, but the floor-to-ceiling windows that enclose the restaurant allow natural light to warm up the place during the day and just as the sun is setting.

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Charlotte Bistro's chef/owner, Elida Villaroel, describes the décor of her Coral Gables restaurant as homemade. The work of she and her husband, the small, homey space could very well have been taken out of the pages of Design Sponge.

​Black and white tile floors contrast against mismatched chairs, some in bright pinks and greens. Patterned red and cream wallpaper covers parts of the walls, while a small back wall is entirely covered in paper featuring Marie Antoinette. Mirrors are also everywhere, in many shapes and sizes, interspersed with paintings along the side walls and looking over the dining room in the wall above the restaurant's entrance.

Dim lighting from hanging lamps and candles on the tables give the place a romantic, cozy feel at night. It's sweet and charming.

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​Jaguar Ceviche Spoon Bar is not all glitz and glam. Far from it, in fact. But it has a warm, welcoming vibe thanks to mustard-colored walls, bright-colored paintings and colorful details like the butterfly mobiles hanging from its ceiling.

Our favorite part is the bar, which albeit simple, looks cool after dark with the long line of hanging wicker lamps above it. Two large mirrors look down at you sitting at the center of the bar. To your left is the ceviche bar, where you can watch staff prepare the restaurant's ceviches as you drink your cold beer. Large, colorful paintings, some by Mexican artist Dionisio Ceballos (who recreated paintings for the movie Frida), add visual interest to the space. It's simple, but we like it.

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​Michelle Bernstein's Sra. Martinez exudes warmth and modernity. When you walk through the commanding front door of the former 1920s post office that houses the restaurant, you're struck by bold red, black, and white accents in the dining room. Immediately, your eye is drawn to the second floor, where bright red chairs pop against the backdrop of a gray brick wall. Around the corner sits a cozy, dimly lit bar.

Huge windows and bullfighting posters cover the high walls of the main dining room. U-shaped, red-leather booths give life to the otherwise dark wood furniture. Black-and-white motifs adorn the back wall of the restaurant and the downstairs bar where diners can watch staff prep in the kitchen. Red continues to weave itself into the dining room in the form of glass lamps hanging over the bar and glass candleholders atop the bar.

The place is warm and vibrant, just like Bernstein.

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Photo courtesy of Fontainebleau Miami Beach

​If there's one restaurant in Miami that immediately comes to mind for spectacular design, it's Hakkasan at the Fontainebleau. The French firm behind it, Gilles & Boissier, is also responsible for other inspired designs that include Maison Boulud, Daniel Bouloud's restaurant in Beijing, and the W Hotel in Shanghai.

Dark-stained walnut tables and latticed panels pose a stunning contrast to the blue backlit screens that surround the restaurant and the turquoise upholstery in its booths. The restaurant has an open kitchen, visible from behind the blue screens in what becomes like an in-dining room theater. Behind the bar, lighting creates the effect of reflecting water. And moving toward the back of the restaurant, the theme becomes old-school opulence in the Ling Ling Room with its Chinoiserie design and black and gold drawn panels.

We're told that the goal in designing the restaurant was "to move away from the minimalism associated with modern Chinese restaurants with a view to 'bringing back the dragon.'" The result? An elegant, sophisticated space dotted with modern versions of authentic Chinese motifs. Take a look.

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