Inside Mamani, a Precision-Built Michelin-Star Restaurant

Mamani, a high-end restaurant in Dallas inspired by classic foods of the French and Italian Rivieras, opened in September. Within eight weeks, it became the second Dallas restaurant to earn a Michelin star.

The restaurant’s classic Riviera-inspired interior, designed by Bryan O’Sullivan Studio, evokes effortless opulence via pastel ombre walls, marble and burl wood finishings, custom end-grain wood flooring and stained-glass panels. But Mamani’s heart, visible from the restaurant’s front entrance, is its display kitchen featuring an island cooking suite. Culinary action is framed by the bespoke pass counter and overhung by a collection of brass lamps.

The display kitchen featuring an island cooking suite is visible to guests as they enter.

Restaurateur brothers Brandon and Henry Cohanim launched Mamani as one of the newest brands in their Feels Like Home hospitality group. Executive chef and partner Christophe De Lellis, who spent 13 years at Joel Robuchon in Las Vegas (itself a three Michelin-stars restaurant), describes Mamani’s cuisine as “bistronomie”—bistro cooking reinterpreted using sophisticated techniques and premium seasonal ingredients. Mamani’s menu includes vitello tonnato, mushroom tart, Maine lobster, wild Dover sole, dry-aged ribeye, veal “Cordon Bleu,” whole duck, and signature dish (and Cohanim family favorite) penne arrabbiata.

The 5,200-square-foot restaurant seats 85 guests indoors, plus an additional 34 in a Mediterranean-style garden terrace. The check average hovers around $165 per person, according to De Lellis.

Tight Quarters

Fitting everything into a compact footprint proved the top challenge for kitchen planners. “Brandon and Henry were pretty specific on the amount of seats they wanted, and they didn’t want to give up any additional space,” says Russell Stilwell, principal of Next Step Design and lead foodservice designer for Mamani. “Typically, high-end French restaurants allocate up to 50% of the space to the back-of-house. But at Mamani, that area is closer to 30%.”

The open kitchen takes up nearly half the foodservice area, followed by warewashing, a tiny prep area and the walk-in. “It was very challenging from a space aspect given the level of execution that we were striving toward,” adds Next Step Senior Project Manager Jeff Mair.   

The tight quarters led to the unusual solution of situating storage in the parking garage below the restaurant. “We had to get the owners involved to make sure that they worked with the property owners to negotiate the extra space,” Mair recalls. “The alternative would have been to take away dining space seats.”

After securing use of garage space, “We converted a narrow area between support columns into a staff locker area. We used a corner spot too tight for cars for the liquor cage and cooler. And we used the low space under the entrance ramp for dry storage,” Stilwell explains.

Cooking Power

De Lellis relied on Stilwell and his 30 years’ experience to design the overall kitchen. De Lellis fine-tuned several pieces of equipment along with the island suite’s various components and configuration.

“The kitchen is really open, and it does work perfectly for what we do,” De Lellis says. “We have (optimized) the space as much as possible. Really, every corner of the back of the house includes a piece of equipment.”

Ample cooking power comes from the stacked combi ovens, the multifunction tilt skillet/kettle/pressure cooker (“The most valuable piece of equipment I have, because we do all our sauces and bases in it,” De Lellis notes), fryers and the island suite’s cooktops.

“You could pretty much rule the world with that combination of equipment right there,” Stilwell says with a laugh.

The mise en place workspace, located to the right of the island suite, serves the pasta station and the cold station. Stilwell and De Lellis opted for two back-to-back single rails fitted with nine 1/6-size pans. Additional prepped ingredients await in cold drawers below deck.

Key pieces of support equipment include a batch freezer for gelatos, pastries and chocolates; a water purification dispenser system offering filtered sparkling or still water; and a sous vide unit to add cooking finesse to delicate foods.

The cold side occupies the right side of the kitchen, the hot side on the left, and “Everything flows straight to the pass counter like a shotgun,” Stilwell says.

The pass counter, when viewed from the dining room, resembles a tall, elegant piece of furniture. Custom-made butter-yellow Pyrolave (enamel coated lava stone) tiles adorn its front, while delicately veined marble serves as the work surface. Overhead, extendable brass lamps corralled in a rectangular glass enclosure spotlight the action. But behind the fine finishes, the counter is all business.

“It’s foodservice equipment all the way,” Stilwell says. The pass counter’s components include a utility chase for plumbing and electric, undercounter refrigeration, a plate-warming cabinet with sliding doors, a ticket printer drawer, a trash receptacle and a vertical tray storage slot. “We don’t even have ticket rails,” Stilwell adds. “Instead, they’re built in and hidden behind the shelf.”

Bar None

The bar sits around the corner from the kitchen in its own alcove. Reflecting owner Brandon Cohanim’s guidance, the design follows European practices in which craft drink-mixing takes place on the worktop rather than at the lower-height equipment commonly used in American bars. “It’s more ergonomic since bartenders aren’t bending over while they work,” Stilwell notes.

Craft drink-mixing takes place on the worktop rather than at the lower-height equipment commonly used in American bars.

Crews fabricated and installed the bar as a single unit rather than an assemblage of individual pieces. “A huge ice bin in the middle and a small condiment rail underneath allows two bartenders to work from the middle out to the sides,” Stilwell says.

The bar’s perforated copper drink rail sits flush with the bar top, allowing completed drinks to be slid across to the server rather than being lifted. The rail’s 8-inch width (vs. the usual 4-inch width) “works better with the craft drink menu’s various elixirs, infusions, shakers and mixers,” Stilwell says. “We also included a dipper well to hold the many utensils needed to make the drinks.”

At 22 inches deep, the back bar “is a little narrower than most 24-inch equipment, in order to leave more space for banquette seating,” Stilwell says. An undercounter wine cooler, refrigeration and a freezer to hold custom ice cubes round out the bar package.

The back-of-house earned just as much attention. “There’s importance to everything,” Mair says. “The smaller the space, the more you have to pay attention to every detail.” The Next Step team added finesse to warewashing and cleaning areas. Highlights include the following:

• Mop closets enclosed in cabinetry, with a stainless door opening onto mop hangers, a shelf, a hot/cold faucet and a hose bib.

• A glasswasher to protect high-end stemware from breakage.

• Another cabinet to store warewashing chemicals, keeping them off the floor and out of sight.

• A warewasher with a soft-start feature to protect delicate dinnerware.

• A polishing station to ensure sparkling silverware and glassware.

Last Word

“I think we’ve done a really great job with the kitchen, from top to bottom,” De Lellis summarizes. “There is nothing that I would change.”

FACTS

MAMANI
DALLAS

OPENED: September 2025

TOTAL SIZE: 5,200 square feet

SEATING: 119 seats

MAMANI: Brandon and
Henry Cohanim, owners, and Christophe De Lellis, executive chef and partner, Feels Like Home, Dallas

CONSULTANT: Russell Stilwell,
principal and lead designer, and Jeff Mair, senior project manager, Next Step Design, Annapolis, Md.

ARCHITECT/INTERIOR DESIGN: Bryan O’Sullivan Studio, New York

DEALER: Chasidy Saxman, kitchen equipment specialist, Amundsen Commercial Kitchens, Dallas

WEBSITE: mamanirestaurant.com

KEY EQUIPMENT

Throughout

Accurex hoods

New Age racks

Metro shelving

IMC/Teddy hand sinks, floor troughs

KITCHEN

Adande dual-temp cabinets

Pitco fryer

RATIONAL combi ovens, multifunction tilt skillet/kettle/pressure cooker

Dry Ager meat curing cabinet

Hatco decorative lamps

Jade Range island suite

Wells drop-in food warmer

Server Products dipper well

Equipex salamander broilers, convection oven

PolyScience sous vide unit

Vero Water dispensing system

Espresso Parts side spray rinser

Schaerer USA espresso machine

Carpigiani batch freezer

BAR

Glastender dry backbar cabinet, refrigerated backbar cabinet, glass frosters

Meiko undercounter glasswasher

Fisher dipper well

BACK-OF-HOUSE

Ecolab conveyor dishwasher

T&S Brass pre-rinse faucets

Salvajor waste collector

Meiko undercounter dishwasher

Henkelman vacuum packaging machine

Traulsen reach-in freezers

Kolpak walk-in cooler

Hobart planetary mixer

Everpure water filtration

Hoshizaki nugget icemaker, bin

Continental refrigerated worktop counters

Cooltec remote refrigeration rack

T&S Brass is pleased to sponsor FER’s Kitchen Design feature. To learn more, visit tsbrass.com.