When a young chef named Zachary Bruell opened Z Contemporary Cuisine in 1985 in the Tower East Building in Shaker Heights, he did more than launch a culinary renaissance in Greater Cleveland.
He ignited a local revolution in restaurant design.
The luminous, white interiors at Z -- made of little more than drywall, paint, carpeting and indirect lighting -- were as ruthlessly minimal as a chic art gallery in New York's SoHo gallery district.
Architect William Blunden, a master of subtraction, described it was "one of the most pristine" spaces he had ever designed.
"There wasn't a space in the city at that time like that," Bruell recalled recently. "I wanted a white space where the color was the people and the food and the artwork -- nothing else."
Since then, restaurants with sleek, chic, modernist interiors have proliferated across the city. It's a cultural phenomenon that has paralleled a dramatic rise in quality of local dining over the past 15 years.
For the full story... http://www.cleveland.com/arts/index.ssf/2009/11/cleveland_architects_match_ris.html