Look at Pastoral's Wall of Windows and More

Here's a look inside Pastoral, the long-awaited Fort Point restaurant slated to open next week. Formerly a location of Neena's Lighting, the space has been converted to a rural-meets-rustic restaurant where diners can get their pizza fix. The main attraction is the oversized, fire-engine red wood burning oven, which takes up most of the kitchen real estate.

"Pastoral is a country/roaming hills/rural/peasant name, so in designing it, we tried searching for warehouse-y brick walls and an industrial feel," says chef/owner Todd Winer. "The vision was Little House on the Prairie inside of a warehouse. It's bits and pieces of my travels and just meant to be a warm place that I'd want to be at everyday and where I'd want to welcome my friends and the neighborhood into."

While there is a definite industrial feel to Pastoral, it's balanced by sunny yellow booths and long farmhouse tables. Dividing the bar, which sits in the back of the restaurant, a long wall of vintage window panes hang, creating an airy feel between the two rooms. "When we started out, it was white floor and very modern, but then when we started pulling back walls, we found all these beautiful brick walls that we left exposed that still had original paint on them," says Winer.

One wall of windows can be opened to give diners an outside feel, without actually being outside. Art hangs along the walls of the dining room. Winer explains that it's from local artists and will be available for sale.

The designer of Pastoral is David McMahon of McMahon Architects. "I just gave him my vision and he put it all together. The window wall is probably my favorite," says Winer. "We have friends who live up in Maine, and they find stuff for people. They pulled all these windows out of barns and antique shops. They also built all of the tables along the wall. It's a lot of mismatched things that we found, but the biggest thing is that we want people to feel comfortable and to have fun."

— Katie Chudy
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