Top Picks: The American Institute of Architects' Best Designed LA Restaurants

AkarStudios designed the interior of this Beverly Hills Indian restaurant, combining deep red with earth tones to create a calming and stress reducing evening meal. The … effect is reasonably swanky, providing a nice compliment to the attentive service and the surprisingly un-Beverly Hills prices (you can save more by sticking to portion-sized appetizers). There's also a bar staffed with competent bartenders who mix drinks that cause women to exclaim "I can't even taste the alcohol." Allegedly. [link]

The CW on this place is that they're still working out all the "umm ... you can't be rude to the customers" kinks almost a year after they opened. But the food is … relatively affordable, and the interior is obviously gorgeous, a combination that's not particularly common along that stretch of Santa Monica. It's technically a wine bar, so the wine selection also provides a bit of a draw. [link]

Hey, the new Wolfgang Puck outpost got an award for something. Also: water is wet, the sky is blue, and LA will have 70-degree sunshine for another three months. Do you … think that he opens up new restaurants every couple of years just so he can win awards for things that aren't Spago? Anyway, Red Seven was designed by Project Designs NYC, it's Wolfgang's seventh LA restaurant, and it's not totally overpriced. [link]

There is simply no fucking way that this fast-spreading nonyogurt yogurt cancer should be winning design awards for anything. This is a chain that literally can't figure … out how to get enough bacteria to grow to produce yogurt -- and we're supposed to believe that their Koreatown outpost is one of the four best-designed cafes in Los Angeles? We're skeptical, and are close to officially calling shenanigans. The AIA says that the interior was designed by Young Lee Design, and the picture they're running is all futuristic and exotic. Whatevs. [link]

There's apparently some kind of yogurt shop in San Gabriel called the Peach House, and they've apparently got a really nice peachy interior (get it?). The … Yelpers seem to like the place, although there's the occasional bitingly witty "bad yogurt. yuck. that's all i can say." In more important news, there's heavy betting at our LA palace about how long it'll take for someone to complain that San Gabriel's not in LA. The over/under's at four comments and we're betting the under. Don't let us down, people. [link]

The AIA has declared that Omega's black and white interior makes it one of the two best designed lounges/nightclubs in Los Angeles. Yelp has three reviews for the Greek … restaurant: "bright lighting seems inconsistent with the decor," "we were a little taken back by the black, black decor and the black & white art," and "BLACK on BLACK with BLACK and BLACK accents and 'artwork.'" Caps and scare quotes in the original. For ourselves, we like the little magnetic shavings at the bar that you can absentmindedly use to make shapes. More restaurants should have toys and games available for customers. [link]

This wine bar managed to score an award even though it's buried in a somewhat less than glamorous strip mall on Vine and Melrose, itself not being the most au courant … part of Hollywood. It's also next door to an Asian massage parlor rumored to be one of "those" Asian massage parlors. And yet, and yet, the Bestor Architecture designed interior is gorgeous, both with communal tables and smaller, more intimate ones. The dim lighting and candlelight (coupled with the guilt that she'll feel for having judged you before seeing the interior) make this a perennial date location. [link]

Of course the one coffee shop that's a finalist is in Silver Lake. And of course it's an organic, direct trade shop with a hopelessly pretentious -- but apparently not … uninspired -- interior designed by Bestor Architecture. And of course it's filled with overwrought scenesters and their fucking yappy little mutts chatting about how they simply can't believe that anyone drinks anything but green coffee. And even though there's some kind of consensus that this is some of the best coffee in Southern California ... whatever. Fuck Silver Lake. [link]

Instead of just hollowing out LA's first power plant and starting over, Kelly Architects left most of the old building intact to create the Edison Bar. The interior … wasn't repainted, and the giant furnaces were left intact. You enter through a back alley and then have the choice of staying in the upper lounge or descending down the not entirely well lit stairs. The effect is a kind of post industrial chic that makes the customer forget that they've somehow been conned into thinking that exposed brick is the new wallpaper. [link]

Problem: You're opening up a 10,000 square foot, 300-seat restaurant in Los Angeles, a city where the foodie culture -- like everything else -- thrives on being able to … get into places that your "friends" can't. Solution: Bring in celebrity chefs, make it the LA presence of New York's Craft, and charge an average of $45 per entree. Designed by Bentel & Bentel Architects, the place is apparently gorgeous. It has things like an 80-seat terrace, which in turn overlooks a four-acre park. As if we'd know. [link]

There was a time in America -- a cleaner, simpler time -- when you could walk into a well designed steakhouse that didn't look like the Zen meditation of a Hollywood … producer with way too much money, coke, and pussy on his hands. That time has apparently passed, and the New Age look of Santa Monica's Boa Steakhouse is now what counts as edgy but elegant. We think that the naturalistic, tree heavy interior may be an ironic memorial to the acres that had to be clearcut to make room for the cattle that were then mercilessly slaughtered to make our delicious steak. Designed by TAG Front Architects. [link]

The newest downtown ultraloungue that's not really in downtown, Blue Velvet has become ground zero for insufferable 20-something foodies who want to rave about the … delicacy of Kris Morningstar's dishes. The interior is by TAG Front Architects, who installed all kinds of glass and water things everywhere. There's a pool that's more or less part of the lounge, and patrons swim back and forth just to show how nonchalant they are among suits and little black dresses sipping $20 drinks. There's also a bonsai forest in the unisex bathroom, because apparently douche is the new Zen. [link]