T-Rex Restaurant and Bar

Location: Berkeley, CA
Completion: November 2005

This striking restaurant, serves as a new anchor building for a retail shopping center, located in an urban area that was once purely industrial. Wood-fired barbecue is the specialty of this fluid, two-story restaurant and bar. It features a variety of indoor and outdoor seating options for 175 customers, as well as an open kitchen, a private room for special events, a take-out area, a bar, and lounge seating—all oriented around a spacious two-story open area, with abundant natural light.
The design uses the minimal modernist lines of a sushi bar, with bamboo floors, a curtain of aluminum-frame windows folding open to the second-floor mezzanine, and a graceful bamboo screen that shields the restaurant from the parking lot. It also showcases a sculptural open staircase in middle of the room, connecting the ground floor to the mezzanine. An outdoor balcony on the second floor overlooks a garden facing away from the street.

Awards + Publications
Contra Costa Times, January 6, “BBQ Buzzes with Brontosaurus-Size Bones” T-Rex Barbeque. Berkeley, CA

San Francisco Chronicle, February 12, p. CM15, “T-Rex Still Evolving”, T-Rex Barbeque. Berkeley, CA

Diablo Magazine, November issue, p. 96, “Chow House: Berkeley Architect Kava Massih is Master of Tastefull Design”, Epicurious Gardens, Nation’s Giant Hamburger and T-Rex Barbecue, all in Berkeley, CA