Your Favorite Restaurant Loves Lamp
It’s unclear when it happened, but at some point, it seems restaurants and bars got dark. Like, need-to-use-your-phone-flashlight-to-read-the-menu dark. At many dimly lit establishments, tealight candles are now de rigueur, as a romantic way to illuminate tables. But in some spaces, the tiny lights can still seem underpowered.
Cut to 2024, and cordless, portable table lamps appear to be having a moment. Specifically, rechargeable tabletop lamps are invading the restaurant scene — much to the relief of diners who’ve felt the pain of struggling to read a menu in the dark. In New York, diners are falling in love with the “mellow glow” of the Pina Pro cordless lamp; Domino declared 2023 the “Summer of Portable Lamps”; and cordless, portable lamps are one of the standout 2024 trends coming out of the Ambiente design trade show this year.
“People underestimate the power of light,” lighting designer Ingo Maurer told the New York Times in 2003. “What it can do, how it can loosen a spirit or how it can make you uptight and boring.” A decade later, this still holds true as chefs and restaurateurs consider how to set the mood through not only decor but also light. For a time, battery-powered votives offered an alternative that felt safer than candles but they didn’t quite capture the allure or strength of the real thing. Now that rechargeable LED lights have hit their stride through efficiency, sustainability, and pricing, restaurants are embracing them as a better alternative.
San Francisco Bay Area restaurants including Mister Jiu’s, Flour + Water, and Alora have all taken to the trend, placing rechargeable lights on table tops. FiDi’s Bar Sprezzatura in particular has lamp charm to spare, with Parisian-esque lamp posts and permanent mini lamps at the bar. The tables also have a strong lamp game showcasing portable lights from Neoz, which are further personalized with custom lamp shades from HB Lighting.
Mattina chef and owner Matthew Accarrino says he went down a portable lamp rabbit hole when he was shopping for the decor for his all-day cafe. He’d seen the tabletop lamp trend in his travels in Europe and took his inspiration from there. In his research, he looked through a number of options before settling on the Fatboy’s Edison the Petit Table Lamp (at left). Accarrino praises the lamps for their aesthetic appeal, simplicity, affordability, longevity — they’ve lasted a year with no issues, he says — and sustainability, given that they’re rechargeable. Although the Edisons didn’t quite fit on the tables, he added the lamps to the bar area and chef’s counter where their low profile feels appropriate. “When we did Mattina we wanted to have a cafe vibe because we do stuff in the morning,” Accarrino says, “so it just felt like a way to soften the space and make it warm. And especially for someone dining at the counter or looking over the kitchen, it didn’t feel too distracting; it just felt like it was something that tied the space together.”
Martin Chadwick Kellogg, principal at Kellogg Architects Inc., handled the design for new restaurant 7 Adams. Initially, he says chef Serena Chow Fisher wanted to pursue a “bookish, library feel” for the space; although they didn’t ultimately pursue that look, what did remain from those plans were the Bellhop Table lamps from FLOS. Kellogg admitted he was already scouting the lamp for his home, but his design team wound up pitching them to the 7 Adams group and they immediately took to them. To Kellogg, the lamp evokes the intimate ambiance of sitting at a library and reading by candlelight. “It’s a new lamp, but I love it because it feels timeless,” Kellogg says. “It could have been designed a long time ago and be vintage somehow. I love its simplicity.”
In general, Kellogg describes lighting as a way to “paint with lights” and recommends restaurants aim to be “tunable” — as in, can move from a brighter experience earlier in the evening down to a dimmer moment for late-night dining, thereby creating certain moods and feelings for diners. “The good thing about the table lamps is they allow the overall ambient light in the restaurant to be lower, but you can still read your menu, you can slide it over and get that light you need,” he says. “So, I love table lamps in restaurants. There was all these discussions about it [at 7 Adams], but it’s one of the things that everyone now loves.” ✦
feb 14, 2024