Restauratour: P.F. Chang's Cool Change

P.F. Chang's newest restaurants display brighter colors and bolder details.

By Lisa Bertagnoli, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 3/1/2003

Take a photographic tour of P.F. Chang's

In its decade of existence, P.F. Chang’s China Bistro has retained a certain look It’s earthy, with lots of stone, wood and rough metal finishes. It’s vaguely Chinese, with ancient-looking horses guarding the outside and equally old warriors looking down on diners as they chow down on chow fun. It’s inclusive, with all the seats except those in the bar gathered in one communal room.

While the restaurants’ basic look remains the same, the company has, in those 10 years, taken steps to polish and refine its interiors. “We have elevated the sense of design and worked on the overall aesthetics to create a stronger design experience,” says Brian Stubstad, director of design and architecture for Scottsdale, Ariz.-based P.F. Chang’s. That means a sharper focus on details such as lighting, booth coverings and wall details, he explains.

Less Space, More Design
That refinement of design shows up in one of P.F. Chang’s newer restaurants, located in Virginia Beach, Va. Situated in a street-facing corner of a new mixed-use retail space called Town Center, the 7,000-square-foot restaurant is a bit smaller than most P.F. Chang’s. But it packs a ton of design detail into the small space.

For instance, a low bronze-and-copper curved tiled wall separates the small waiting area from the dining room. Unlike the Great Wall of China, this wall doesn’t obscure anything; rather, it cordons off the waiting area, yet lets diners see and hear the dining experience. The small, glossy tiles catch and reflect light, sending a message of subtle richness.

“The tile is way different from what P.F. Chang’s would have used in the past,” but not different enough to compromise the chain’s identity, says Joseph Vajda, principal at Aria Group Architects Inc., the Oak Park, Ill.-based design firm in charge of the project.

Booths and banquettes ring the dining room. These booths are clothed in highly detailed, imported fabric instead of the plain vinyl that covers booths at older restaurants. A brown-and-cream woven fabric adorns the five big booths at the back of the dining room. From a distance, the fabric looks like rattan. Other booths have a black-and-burgundy pattern reminiscent of Chinese characters. “We go out of our way to find European textiles,” Stubstad says.

The tile and booth fabrics lend subtle design detail to the space. But the restaurant’s boldest, most striking detail is a 78-foot-long, seven-and-a-half-foot-tall, hand-painted mural that floats in a half-circle above the dining room.

Each of the 80 or so P.F. Chang’s has a mural, which depicts 2,000-year-old Chinese graphics. The Virginia Beach mural is the biggest of them all, and unlike the other murals, it’s hung in a concave position. This way, the entire graphic is visible from almost every seat in the house.

Other design details include hand-blown, red Murano glass light fixtures that complement the chain’s signature golden disk lights, tile-and-wood wall inlays and a hand-pounded copper-and-iron railing that separates the dining area from the bar. Such details “give the space a little more pop,” Stubstad says.

Emergency Artwork
Not all design work went according to plan. The mural, for instance, turned out to be 10 feet short, so Stubstad had to fly two muralists to the store to paint an addition to it.

The company had also planned to install statues of horses outside the restaurant, but at the last minute the city stepped in and said that the horses wouldn’t leave enough room on the sidewalk for pedestrians. “That was our biggest compromise,” says Vajda.

Finally, a glass-enclosed wine cellar is less prominent than the designers planned. The wine cellar was meant to line the entrance to P.F. Chang’s from an adjacent hotel, but that detail fell through when the hotel backed out of the Town Center development.

As P.F. Chang’s opens more restaurants—about 26 in the next two years—the company will continue to refine and punch up design, Stubstad says. Brighter paint colors and more intricate millwork on walls and soffits are a few of the tricks he wants to try in the future.

“We’re trying to update and create not a chain, but a collection of restaurants,” he says. “We will always be in constant change.”