Future restaurants of designer Kristopher Keith: Deluxe, Osaka, Barkley and Radio Milano

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Kristopher Keith and his design firm Spacecraft are currently in various stages of putting together four new restaurants and bars in Hollywood and one in Pasadena.

First there’s Adolfo Suaya’s Deluxe, which is on Cahuenga near Selma and has been decked out by Keith to resemble something out of an Ayn Rand novel. The classically Art Deco bar and restaurant (Keith says that Eric Greenspan from the Foundry will most likely do the menu; Greenspan confirms that he is currently in negotiations with Suaya) is full of rich mahogany wood and the long bar, broken into two sections by a towering fireplace, is backed by a 10-by-50-foot emerald stained glass mural that features what looks like a large blimp and rows of city smoke stacks.

‘I wanted to go for a sort of artistic Gotham City vibe,’ Keith says. Upstairs the ladies will be pleased to find a plush, red-walled dressing room with vanity mirrors and elegant chandeliers. (You can see more detail shots of Deluxe on Eater L.A.)

Next Keith walked me over to another Suaya project, a Peruvian restaurant named Osaka on Hollywood Boulevard at Ivar (next to the L. Ron Hubbard Life Exhibit) that is still very much in the early phases of construction. Keith recently had the front of the space torn down and had a pit dug that will be the future home of a koi pond that diners will walk across in order to enter the restaurant. The skeleton of a large rectangular ceviche bar has been built; behind that there will be an open kitchen and to the left of the bar will be a pisco lounge with an open roof and plenty of foliage, including Japanese elms. If all goes well, Osaka will open in April 2009.

Keith, who came from North Carolina to L.A. with designs on becoming a bigwig in the restaurant and nightlife worlds, is tall and blond with blue eyes, a slight drawl and a laid-back manner. When he talks about his projects, no matter how far out they are, he gets excited.

‘I think of what I do as art,’ he says. ‘I think of each new project as an installation piece.’

Soon he’ll get his hands on the Karma coffeehouse on Selma and Cahuenga and turn it into a still un-named gourmet burger eatery. To that end he refers to the project, which will entail covering the outside of the building in brick and tearing down the whole wall on the Cahuenga side to create an indoor/outdoor space, simply as ‘Burger Joint.’ He says the opening is probably about six months out.

Also on Keith’s plate are a new lounge called the Barkley, which is on Melrose in the old Forty Deuce space and will feature ‘a late ‘70s vibe with a sunken fireplace and a bar and lounge with small plates,’ and a pizzeria bar next door to Pasadena’s La Grande Orange called Radio Milano. Radio Milano is owned by the same folks who own La Grande Orange and Keith says it will share a kitchen and a bar with that restaurant.

What else? Keith is still finalizing small design details of Kitchen 24 -- he plans to add ‘totem poles made out of plates and saucers and bowls’ to complement his cutlery lamps.

-- Jessica Gelt