Inside Kostali by Naha, Downtown Chicago’s New Modern Coastal Escape

Chef Carrie Nahabedian and sommelier Michael Nahabedian last week unveiled Kostali, the cousins’s latest restaurant, a coastal escape that serves a Mediterranean medley of European and African food. Seeking to avoid the traps set by drab hotel restaurants, the management behind the Gwen brought in the Nahabedians, who are known for Beard Award winners Brindille and Naha.

The restaurant resides on the fifth floor of the McGraw-Hill building and seats 68. Cousin Tom Nahabedian, whose firm’s work earned Brindille a Beard Award for design, aims to remind customers of the feeling of dining on the coasts by creating a restaurant with bronze-toned metal screens and nautical browns and blues. The marble terrazzo floor tile, which comes from the Carrarra mountains off the coast of the Italian Riviera, is meant to evoke the experience of Old Italian palazzos.

Take a tour through the restaurant in the photos below. Kostali, inside the Gwen, a Luxury Collection Hotel, opened last week at 521 N. Rush Street.