Courtyard Kitchen

The Courtyard Kitchen is a family-owned restaurant in a historic landmark building on Santa Monica's Montana Avenue. When the beloved neighborhood spot was ready to grow, Matter designed its expansion into a larger, more immersive space — one that keeps the warmth of a family table while opening room to gather.

The brief was to make something unexpected: a restaurant interior that lifts guests out of the everyday and into the ease of a vacation. We layered texture, greenery, and light across a sequence of indoor-outdoor rooms, so even a weekday lunch feels a little like being somewhere else.

The result is a commercial hospitality interior with genuine soul — a Santa Monica dining room that feels transportive, generous, and unmistakably its owners'.