This book offers a unique window on the latest developments in this area of American architecture, with thirty projects delineating the varied horizon of restaurant design across the States, in which the trend of "theme" eateries initiated in the early 1990s continues unabated, but now with a more toned-down concept that relies on a clever interplay between the menu itself and the architecture, between flavor and context, fostering an altogether more exclusive, singular genre of eating venue. In the case of Asian restaurants and the more upmarket venues in particular, on both sides of the planet new figures of reference have emerged including imaginative reworkings of traditional oriental motifs.