MALKA Restaurant

In Florida, You Can Hardly Get Enough of Looking Around

Restaurant Malka, West Palm Beach, Kimmel Eshkolot Architects

In autumn 2024, Malka in West Palm Beach, Florida, welcomed its first guests. The roots of the restaurant—like those of its creator and head chef—lie in Tel Aviv. In 1989, Eyal Shani opened his first restaurant in Jerusalem. Today, he is not only a chef but also a gourmet entrepreneur and the owner of a wide range of restaurant brands around the globe. Like its locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn, the new Malka stands for kosher cuisine that draws its inspiration from all over the world.

The integration conceived by Kimmel Eshkolot Architects—of fire and community, warm wood and soft concrete grey, lightness and lush greenery, interior and exterior, Florida and Palm Beach—is simply overwhelming. Particularly striking are the open kitchen arranged around an open grill, as well as the permeable interior walls made from 15,000 custom-made, perforated concrete elements. They reference the idea of the mashrabiya, a traditional Middle Eastern architectural element used to regulate air and light.

All of this takes place on almost 1,000 square metres in total, within a listed building from the 1930s. Everything is thought through down to the smallest detail, made from selected materials and custom-built—including the contribution by more. Through our long-standing partner Habitat in Tel Aviv, we first received the request for the LAX Bench, which we equipped with a fire-resistant fleece due to the complex fire safety regulations in the USA. We translated the NIL Table into various formats and adapted it to the warm colour palette of the interior using smoked oak and a matte lacquer finish.

This led to the desire to also use NIL in the outdoor area and to redesign it once again for this purpose. It was produced from weather-resistant, smoked acacia wood with slats integrated into the tabletop. In essence, an entirely new piece of furniture was created, one that fits perfectly into the idea of a Mediterranean garden. Those who choose to sit outside enjoy not only the mild, salty Atlantic air, but also a comfortable seat on one of our BOP Benches. Here, only the upholstery modules were used and fixed onto concrete platforms without any visible connecting seams.

LAX Bench

NIL Table

NIL Table Acacia / Outdoor

BOP Bench

Architect

Kimmel Eshkolot Architects

Project Partners

Habitat