When a fire ravaged Restaurant Piatti on Montreal’s North Shore in late 2020, destroying the roof and interior, the owners reframed the calamity as an opportunity. After all, the institution that had called the century-old building home since 2008 was overdue for a refresh. “The fire was an opportunity to step up their design to the same level as their food and reputation,” says Philip Staszewski, an architect and partner at Ivy Studio, the local firm that managed the renovations.

In Restaurant Piatti’s renovated bar space, contemporary finishes contrast with the building’s original stone walls.

A main goal of the revamp was to expand the restaurant’s clientele; the owners wanted to bring in younger patrons while ensuring long-standing customers still recognized and felt welcome in the space. To achieve this balance, Ivy Studio re-emphasized Piatti’s signature elements — raw stone walls, European white tablecloths, a monolithic pizza oven — while layering in contemporary updates like zigzagging tile flooring and abstract artworks made collaboratively with local plaster artisan Joey Di Venosa.

Light fixtures designed in collaboration with Hamster include a tentacular chandelier…

and the faucet-like protrusions that line the pizza counter.

Another key challenge was ensuring the restaurant’s three small seating areas — a bar and two dining rooms, one of which holds just four tables — felt intimate rather than claustrophobic. To that end, Ivy Studio used creative tactics to evoke a sense of expansiveness and mystique. Large mirrors hang in strategic locations: in long rows along several walls, plus next to the arched kitchen entrance. In the main dining room, which flows onto the terrace, the firm swapped a wall of windows for doors that slide open during summer.

An arched mirror placed adjacent to the kitchen entrance lends the dining room an expansive quality.

The other side of the main dining room communicates the seriousness with which Piatti treats its pizzas. Clad in dark green marble and enclosed by a curved counter, its wood-fired pizza oven is both a culinary feature and an aesthetic centrepiece. “We wanted the oven to be very monumental and grounded, a real focal point in the space,” explains Staszewski. The severity of this monolith is contrasted by playful cream-coloured tubular light fixtures designed with Montreal studio Hamster and doughnut-shaped sconces made by Huey Lightshop in Toronto.

Burnt umber stools line the bar, a heavy black stain defines the pizza counter and green bistro chairs populate the larger dining room. White oak flooring throughout allows the spaces to flow logically into one another. “Maybe the resonance with the colours of the Italian flag was subconscious,” admits Staszewski. The combination of the Canadian wood floors with the Mediterranean-inspired finishes found elsewhere (those raw stone walls and new travertine countertops) also skilfully channels the proudly Italian–Canadian character of the restaurant’s cuisine and culture. Like the pizzas it has served for nearly 15 years, Piatti’s new space is both relaxed and sophisticated, familiar and artisanal.