From Hong Kong to Los Angeles, where are best restaurant interiors currently positioned? Design in 2026 has shifted decisively away from spectacle toward intentional restraint prioritising acoustics, materiality, craft and gentle gestures of light over purely visual impact. It’s why these projects are worth talking about now — an all-timber restaurant houseboat in Tokyo, walnut paneling set against Brutalist concrete at Marcel in New York, a restaurant framing the surrounding nature in Melbourne — all lean on the same instinct: creating warmth and sensory depth. Discover five new interiors from our global team at Champ Travel.

LOS ANGELES

Bar di Bello brings Milanese aperitivo culture to Silver Lake’s Sunset Row, with a sophisticated interior by designer Dean Levin of 22RE channeling a retro Italian yacht. Inside, find a red travertine bar imported from Iran, warm American walnut paneling, velvet curtains, Hans-Agne Jakobsson table lamps and Vico Magistretti chairs under a custom grid ceiling. Here it about the Negronis and shareable Northern Italian plates like trofie alla Genovese with a side of Italo disco.

TOKYO

Aboard Izanagi, Tokyo’s centuries-old yakatabune tradition gets a wagyu-forward reinvention — a lantern-lit 12-seat houseboat cruise through Tokyo Bay paired with an omakase of seared beef sushi and charcoal-grilled chateaubriand. Part floating dining room, part skyline show, it’s Edo-era elegance recast for a modern palate. Designed by Oyamatsu Design Studio led by Minoru Oyamatsu taking notes from traditional Japanese architectural style sukiya-zukuri, the interior is abundant in natural wood with a vast cedar bark ceiling, signature column and tokonoma alcove-like feature space with a centuries-old bonsai at centre place. The modern twist comes with soft, carpeted floors and low, Scandinavian-style upholstered seating.

NEW YORK

On the lower level of Marcel Breuer’s landmark 1966 Brutalist building at 945 Madison Avenue, find Marcel, a chic new Roman and Williams-designed space with a concept led by its namesake architect. Robin and Stephen Alesch set custom Roman and Williams Guild lighting — cast bronze and amber cast glass sconces and lamps — alongside vintage Breuer lamps sourced at auction, and dressed the room in dusty cocoa mohair banquettes, rich walnut paneling, and a bar serving drinks in handcrafted Japanese glassware. A dramatic original Breuer staircase, its walnut-and-bronze railing suspended over a 30-foot drop of bush-hammered concrete, sets the tone for the whole space, while the private dining room adds persimmon velvet upholstery and custom-colored Kasthall carpets. Throughout, the design plays warm materials and curved forms against the building’s raw concrete bones, turning an imposing Brutalist landmark into something sensory and intimate.

HONG KONG

MELBOURNE

Yiaga led by chef Hugh Allen, occupies a once-derelict pavilion kiosk in Melbourne’s Fitzroy Gardens, reimagined by acclaimed local architect John Wardle — his first-ever restaurant project, chosen deliberately for his outsider’s eye. Wardle retained the site’s existing structure and pyramidal roof while wrapping the intimate 44-seat room in a continuous, tonal, almost womb-like wall of 13,000 handmade, ridged ochre tiles extruded locally in Melbourne, paired with an iron-oxide-tinted concrete floor that convincingly mimics outback dirt. Nearly every element was designed and made in Australia by independent craftspeople: Jon Goulder’s Tasmanian blackwood dining chairs, Edward Linacre’s bespoke lighting, hand-blown glassware by Alexandra Hirst, and a private dining table carved by Vivienne Wong from a fallen cypress branch sourced from Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens. The result is a space where garden views, domestic craft, and architecture are as central to the experience as the food itself — a restaurant, as Wardle put it, where design completes the meal.

For more global design-led travel destinations, discover more here