This atmospheric New York restaurant was designed to be a ‘beautiful ruin’

When husband-and-wife restaurateurs Natalie Johnson and Nick Anderer approached architect David Bucovy about designing their latest New York project, Leon’s, they presented him with fragments of seashells and ceramics that they had found on the beach of Naples, Italy.

Like these jewel-like pieces, their restaurant was to be an homage to the coast of Italy and all the flavours along it. But it would also tell the couple’s story – Johnson’s great-grandfather and the restaurant’s namesake, Leon Hakim, was born in Alexandria, Egypt and later emigrated to France. The new eatery, located two blocks south of Union Square, weaves all of these narratives into one elegant tableau.

Wallpaper* dines at Leon’s, New York

The mood: timeworn and timeless

Before Johnson and Anderer even settled on a space, they had already envisioned what it would look like: ‘We wanted to evoke the idea of a beautiful ruin, which is something that always strikes us when we're travelling,’ says Johnson.

They discovered the perfect location kitty-corner from the Strand bookstore: an airy 5,500 sq ft ground-floor storefront in an 1895 office building. If the location didn’t win them over, the two original Corinthian columns certainly did. ‘[Nick] and I are both kind of romantic and classicists and love old things,’ adds Johnson.

The pair found their ideal creative partner and fellow lover-of-old-things in Bucovy, who recently renovated Casa Lever inside Gordon Bunshaft’s midcentury icon, Lever House.

‘The clients are romantics,’ affirms the architect, who has known the couple from Anderer’s time as an executive chef at Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group. ‘And they’re not just food people chasing a trend; They also wanted to create a space that's a community space, an everyday restaurant.’

Bucovy’s resulting design bridges both old and new worlds. First and foremost, he wanted to celebrate the original Corinthian columns in all their timeworn glory. A cove plaster ceiling contains both of them, a move that obscures electrical elements, provides an acoustic buffer, and – one of the restaurant’s cleverest design Easter eggs – references the Renaissance development of perspective in its angled outline (‘We thought we’d play a game with the antiquity of the Corinthian columns,’ Bucovy says.)

To bring all of that loftiness back down to earth, Bucovy selected more solid, grounding elements, like curved banquettes and a central bar made from American White Oak, stained a rich mocha brown.‘You’re filling this space the way you might inhabit a ruin,’ the architect explains.

And while the architect relied on a palette of ‘primal, earthy materials’ in many of the finishes and textures (Venetian plaster, rugged leather upholstery, poured concrete floors, minty quartzite and Cipollino marble), direct references to the original handful of seashells and pottery shards dot the space like jewels.

There are custom sconces by Naples-based artisan Vincenzo Oste which, rather than shades, have large shells as their diffusers; Oste also designed exquisite shell-shaped nickel drawer pulls for the custom casegoods. Bucovy’s studio, meanwhile, among other tailor-made elements, designed a custom French enamel table and bespoke polished nickel table lamps that dot the bar.

‘There's a simplicity, a kind of quietude – sort of a Lawrence Durrell air to its agedness,’ Bucovy muses, referencing the British travel writer and novelist.

The food: Naples meets Alexandria

Like Anton’s, Johnson and Anderer’s cozy West Village tavern focussed on old-school New York dishes, Leon’s celebrates cooking from an earlier era. This time, though, the emphasis is squarely on the cuisine of central and southern Italy, but with Egyptian accents.

‘When you travel through southern Italy, a lot of that North African spice starts to creep its way north into that Italian cuisine… It’s an interesting cultural cross-section that exists and it’s also a part of my family story,’ says Johnson.

There’s a pilaf al Hakim, for example – a fragrant rice dish spiced with cumin, coriander, and cinnamon. There’s a butterflied branzino for two, which can be cooked up Italian or Egyptian style. ‘Nick spent a lot of time with my mom remembering the dishes that Leon's wife, my mom's grand-mère Lucie, would make,’ says Johnson, who also oversees the restaurant’s wine program.

Then, there’s the sweet stuff, like tart au citron or crème caramel, taken directly from Grand-mère Lucie’s hand-written recipes. Those recipes worked their way into Bucovy’s design, too: at the back of the restaurant, en route to the timber-clad private dining room or marble-lined bathrooms, the walls are scrawled with hand-written text – replicas of grand-mère Lucie’s culinary notes.

Back inside the main dining room, visitors will discover a large-faced clock embedded into the bar’s pediment, inspired by a famous one in the 18th-century Caffè Gilli in Florence. The time is purposely calibrated to run six hours ahead – Italian time - reminding diners that at Leon’s, they’re always elsewhere.

Leon’s is located at 817 Broadway, New York, NY 10003, United States; leonsnyc.com