Visual feasts

Restaurant designers around the world rely on San Francisco mural artists Mark Evans and Charley Brown to add a note of occasion to the dining experience. The chefs, and even the restaurants themselves, come and go. Scala’s Bistro in downtown San Francisco’s Sir Francis Drake Hotel (the restaurant murals are shown above and below) is one establishment that has endured. “We created a world where we’re all at home,” architect Hans Baldauf, who collaborated with Evans & Brown on the project, told Interiors magazine in 1997.

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Diners at P.F Chang’s across the U.S. admire some of the 60 Evans & Brown murals made for the restaurant group as it expanded in the U.S. during the 1990s. Some are fifty to sixty feet long, reflecting a variety of traditional motifs from Chinese history; you can see details in the pictures that follow the full-width images below.

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Their restaurant murals have enlivened other venues around the country – ranging from a bakery in Chicago to a seafood restaurant at Disneyland’s California Adventure in Anaheim. Music? Victuals? Festivals? Fish? The history of art is filled with references to virtually any human endeavor, and Mark and Charley delight in pinpointing just the right period and genre references for a particular project.

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