A Feast for the Eyes
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Suhail’s big break comes after nearly a decade struggling to establish himself in Chicago. He earned both his undergraduate and graduate degrees at the Birmingham School of Architecture in England. On a lark he came to Chicago in 1990 with a group of students; when the group visited the offices of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, executives there saw some of Suhail’s sketches and hired him. But six months later the building recession of the early 90s hit and Suhail was let go. Unwilling to return to England, he tried to develop his own business. Money was so scarce that while constructing a model he would buy a tool, use it, return it for a refund, and then buy the next tool he needed. Finally he got a job designing Trio, a hair salon on Walton. “We all brainstormed,” remembers owner Alex Ioannou, “and then Suhail came up with this raw, unfinished furniture that had an industrial feel.” That gig led to a job designing eight facilities for Heidi’s Salons, a Michigan-based chain, and then to Phoebe45, a Bucktown store that sells cutting-edge fashions.
Now Suhail hopes Tizi Melloul will burnish his reputation in Chicago’s highly competitive architectural design market. The restaurant’s lounge and bar are primarily white, with bulbous, off-white ceiling lamps that suggest gourds or the robes of dervishes. The main dining room is decorated in bright red and ringed with elaborate tapestries bearing the Moroccan crown. The circular second dining room is smaller, bathed in dark blue tones, with round leather pillows and low-lying tables where patrons can feast in authentic Moroccan fashion, using their fingers if they wish. Suhail describes the decor as a mix of contemporary, Eastern exotica, and the sleek metalwork that’s become his trademark. “Minimalism has been done,” he says. “I want people to have a real emotional reaction when they visit this restaurant.”
When New York producer Alan Schuster bought the Royal George Theatre Center a year ago, he said he would keep the main stage lit as much as possible. Now Schuster has announced his first production at the theater: Love, Janis, a musical about Janis Joplin, will open July 29. Schuster says the play broke box-office records last year at the Cleveland Playhouse, but he’ll have a tough time opening it in the middle of the quiet summer season. If it bombs Schuster may replace it with Wit, the Pulitzer Prize-winning off-Broadway play about a doctor facing ovarian cancer. Schuster has the rights to stage the show here, but he isn’t likely to get Kathleen Chalfant, who earned raves in New York for her performance in the lead role; she leaves the show in early August to rest up before reprising the role in Los Angeles and London.
