It’s the story of blending the traditional with the contemporary, the recycled with the new...

It’s a tale of the search for the perfect light fixture, the best salvaged lumber and lucky auction finds. It’s the saga of hours spent agonizing over just the right wall colour. It’s the adventure of Greg Hays and Silvia Marcolini, creators of Cafe Brio, with its peached coloured stucco facade and clay-tile roof, sage green shutters and wrought-iron fence. "In the colours and decor, we were looking for a neo-Renaissance feel that was spirited, yet also comfortable," Marcolini says. Using her gift for interior decorating, she sketched out some ideas... "The food dictated for me how this building was to look. But it’s not just the food, not just the decor. Both are part of the whole concept." Early evening drifts in the three wide-open doors, falls from skylights and pools up in several high windows. The walls are terra cotta or mustard yellow, with Hays’ and Marcolini’s art collection and a couple of gilt-framed mirrors. But it’s the light fixtures that draw attention. Most of them are vestiges from a turn-of-the-century carriage house and mansion. Their torch shades, amber glass panes and muted white sconces throw off a warm, inviting glow. White light spills into cabernet sauvignon. Above everyones' drinks are 10 art nouveau-styled, bell-shaped shades in frosted amber glass, suspended from 14-foot high ceilings. The 500-square-foot patio with its alfresco dining for 32 is a room of its own. Pour concrete was scored and Marcolini applied an acid-eating stain for that mottled, worn look. The wrought-iron fencing also wears its age well. Thick strips of iron were hand forged into flowering curls and delicate fiddlehead flourishes, and then powder-coated for the whole thing to look as if it was left to rust. Bifold doors open on either side of the main entrance, inviting the outdoors right in to Cafe Brio’s antipasto bar. The doors were made from old-growth Douglas fir rescued from the defunct Yarrow shipyards in Esquimalt. The collapsed ceiling of an airport hangar is the flooring. The slightly concave, eight-inch-wide planks of old-growth fir from the Coast were lightly sanded to even them up. Then, any remaining paint was buffed off, leaving the natural patina of the aged wood. The U-shaped bar is decked in reclaimed solid edge-grain fir, with seating for 12.The antipasto bar tables, were modeled after those from Western Canada’s Doukhobor community. And the wrought-iron bar stool creations, were crafted and then left to stand outside for over a month, before a few coats of Varathane were applied to seal in the effect.

"Most of all, I don’t want Cafe Brio to look new," says Marcolini. "I want it to look as if  its’ been around for a while. I want people to say when the walk in, ‘Gee, how did we miss this place?’"

But really how could they?

(Excerpted from an article by Claire Sykes which appeared in the
Boulevard, the magazine of urban living Aug/Sept. 1997.)