For the main dining room at Il Totano restaurant in downtown Manhattan, Sasha Bikoff Interior Design channeled coastal Italy through 60-inch-wide basketlike rattan ceiling fixtures from Visual Comfort, Maharam’s sunset-toned felt banquette upholstery, and grotto-inspired wall paint in a custom limewash finish conceived with Little Greene.
It was 2018 when Sasha Bikoff made a splash at her first ever Kips Bay Decorator Showhouse in New York, turning the staid spiral stairway into a vivid and memorable journey of chromatic pattern play. Since that, her residential practice took off—and, more recently, so has her commercial work, as witnessed in Il Totano, located a couple dozen blocks south of that fateful showhouse.
The 1,900-square-foot, 85-seat restaurant is an ode to all things southern Italian, from the seafood-focused cuisine (chef Harold Dieterle is of Sicilian heritage; il totano means flying squid) to the décor, its luminous, saturated palette inspired by the “sunset-colored beach umbrellas, terra-cotta ceramics, and calypso-blue grottos,” Bikoff admires on her frequent visits to the Amalfi Coast. Among the highlights are the dining room’s massive rattan light fixtures reminiscent of fishing baskets, the restroom’s octopus-spangled wallpaper, and the bar’s lemon-yellow table lamps, fittingly sourced from Flos.
Savor This Restaurant Embracing Southern Italian Heritage
For the main dining room at Il Totano restaurant in downtown Manhattan, Sasha Bikoff Interior Design channeled coastal Italy through 60-inch-wide basketlike rattan ceiling fixtures from Visual Comfort, Maharam’s sunset-toned felt banquette upholstery, and grotto-inspired wall paint in a custom limewash finish conceived with Little Greene.
The bar’s Marcel Breuer Cesca stools and chairs, Bellhop table lamps by Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby, and custom sconces in alabaster-esque resin.
This dining area is reminiscent of sunset-colored beach umbrellas that are seen on the Amalfi Coast.
All branding and custom dishware also by Bikoff.
A restroom’s Etsy-sourced mirror and Octopussy wallpaper from Voutsa.