At a Balenciaga show during Paris fashion week, Heated Rivalry star Hudson Williams shared his offhand evaluation of Victoria, British Columbia, where he was returning the next day to finish filming an upcoming mystery thriller. “Dead as f––,” he said, raising the eyebrows of at least a few locals. Victoria mayor Marianne Alto joked, “Clearly he didn’t ask me to show him around town, did he?” But, for the record, Williams had started off by also describing the city as “very stabilizing.” And on a r/VictoriaBC Reddit thread, many seemed to understand that his phrasing had actually been a compliment. Especially for a Hollywood star, there is nothing more sacred than the slow life. Just ask new Victoria restaurant Lumache, a place that proves the city’s culinary and creative scene is alive and well — it just operates at a refreshingly calm pace.

For Lumache owners Heather Dosman and James Frost, an unhurried existence is a point of pride — so much so that they named their dining establishment after the Italian word for snails. The moniker reflects their restaurant’s wholehearted embrace of the slow food movement — here, Italian pasta is crafted by hand, “rigorous in its adherence to tradition but with modern and playful touches.”

That same philosophy carries over to Saksun Studio’s design for the restaurant, too. Based in Vancouver, principal designer Claire Saksun and her team had already made a name for themselves in Victoria with Softer Drink Shop, a tea room that opened last year with the kind of edgy style usually only seen in cocktail bars. (No surprise, then, that the project won the Mixed-Use Interior Design category at Design Victoria’s IDEA Awards). At Lumache, Saksun Studio shows the same knack for creating a destination packed with quiet thrills.

To start off, Saksun set out to emphasize the care being put into Lumache’s dishes by configuring the space around an open kitchen that places theatrical pasta making front and centre. Otherwise, the restaurant features just three tables and six bar seats, achieving a warm intimacy.

Making the most of a limited materials budget, a graphic trompe l’oeuil wall treatment adds romantic, architectural flair. Saksun borrowed the idea from building façades in Northern Italian cities like Liguria, “where paint is used to emulate the elaborate architectural details of more historically wealthy cities,” she says. The result has a dreamy, whimsical beauty, matched by curtains that evoke wavy sheets of pasta.

Thoughtful, handcrafted elements round out the dining room. Fabric pendant shades, made by Saksun herself to mimic the spiral pattern of mollusc shells, hang amongst additional, Murano glass lighting that honours the Italian coast. Meanwhile, hand-turned table legs by the project’s millworker, Craig McWilliam, perfectly capture the restaurant’s balance between contemporary and traditional approaches. To top things off, a painting by artist Andy Hurt holds court above a corner booth.

Zooming in further, decor serves as the project’s final layer, introducing an assortment of well-loved tableware sourced from Victoria nonnas, including Claire’s own grandmother. In another personal touch, the restaurant’s candlesticks were originally used for the owners’ wedding. In other words, the space is packed with the type of richly textured details that you only notice when you stop to take a breath.

Speaking of which, a few days later, Hudson Williams amended his original evaluation of Victoria with a post on Threads, reiterating that the city was “Dead asf” but saying that it also “Feels like home/heart gets full.” We can’t say if he’s dined at Lumache yet, but he’d probably find it very stabilizing.