Welcome to The Looker, a column about design and style from San Francisco Standard editor-at-large Erin Feher.

Kalu Gebreyohannes-Royster strolls up to the corner of Larkin and Post streets looking more put-together than anyone in a 10-block radius. She’s wearing head-to-toe Rosie Assoulin: chocolate-brown linen pants and top marbled with black lace cutouts, scooped up at McMullen, the Laurel Heights boutique that last year injected SF with a shot of Oakland style. Her hoops and chain stack are by her favorite Oakland jeweler, Cocoacentric. She is nailing the early-afternoon red lip. 

She’s headed to the new celeb-studded, Ethiopian-Dominican restaurant and nightlife spot Meski, where she oversaw the interiors, ahead of Friday’s grand opening. The co-owner of this Lower Nob Hill restaurant is a marquee name around these parts: Draymond Green. The Golden State Warriors power forward and Dogpatch resident is the antithesis of a San Francisco hater. (We still see you, Charles Barkley.) Green’s hoping Meski is exactly what this sleep-score-obsessed, sartorially adrift city needs. And to make it happen, he and his co-owners called on Oakland’s finest artists and designers. 

Gebreyohannes-Royster is the co-owner of Blk Girls Green House, a plant shop and high-style clubhouse that opened almost five years ago in West Oakland. Since then, she has been in high demand for her myriad talents: interior designer, event producer, plant whisperer. She was tapped to design everything at Meski, from the jewel-toned sofas in the subterranean lounge to the 22-foot living centerpiece, a biophilic spine of preserved eucalyptus, amaranth, and baby’s breath. 

She was tapped by Meski’s other two partners, restaurateur Guma Fassil and chef Nelson German, both of whom also play a starring role in Oakland’s high-energy food, art, and music scenes. 

Fassil is an event promoter and heir to the original Meski’s Kitchen and Garden, a beloved Ethiopian restaurant in Berkeley started by his late mother more than 30 years ago. (It was also known as Meskie’s.) German is behind Oakland’s Afro-Latin cocktail bar Sobre Mesa and the Dominican restaurant alaMar, both of which are celebrated for the food but beloved for the vibe: colorful, soulful spaces where the music is turned up just a little bit louder, and the patrons bring an energy to match. 

A few minutes after Gebreyohannes-Royster settles into a window seat for our interview, the front door swings open. The artist Taylor Smalls, in a silk maxi slip dress with matching reptilian-skinned boots, surveys the room, eyes lingering on an adjacent seating area hung with a wall-spanning portrait of a woman in rich browns, golds, and tans. It’s a work by Smalls, an Oakland painter who helped usher the city out of its post-lockdown funk with “Throughline,” a multi-night, multi-genre dinner party-meets-art show where she debuted 13 portraits of some of Oakland’s most influential and inspirational Black women, including chef Tanya Holland, singer Goapele, and activist and author Akilah Cadet (all of whom were in attendance). 

Gebreyohannes-Royster and Smalls are responsible for the space’s dramatic glow-up. It most recently housed the short-lived bar and restaurant Members Only, and the whiff of old-boys’ club  was strong when they did the first walk-through. “I don’t want to say cold, but it felt heavy,” Gebreyohannes-Royster said.

At Meski, the heaviness is lifted by dollops of rich color — warm golds, jungle greens, and sultry reds — soulful artworks, and a profusion of natural materials, like rattan, rope, and, of course, live plants. The assignment for Gebreyohannes-Royster was a quick and efficient facelift, since the bones of the space were solid: The 1927 storefront had received a down-to-the-studs renovation in 2016, when the ambitious bar and restaurant Saratoga debuted. Plus, she was given an ultra-tight timeline of less than a month to work her magic. 

“The space feels alive. The intersection of art and greenery almost makes it feel like it’s breathing,” German said. “There’s a rhythm.”

To execute Meski’s Dominican Republic-meets-North Africa mashup, Gebreyohannes-Royster started her design journey on North Oakland’s Telegraph Avenue, which is dotted with Ethiopian and Eritrean shops and restaurants. Like Fassil, Gebreyohannes-Royster is Ethiopian, and she was eager to fulfill the owners’ request that the place aesthetically represent their diasporic cultures. She hand-picked masks, textiles, and art from family-owned shops like Yagerbet Ethiopian Market. A friend who collects art from East Africa helped procure paintings by up-and-coming Ethiopians. 

One “wow” moment at Meski happens in an unexpected place: the short hallway to the restrooms, which Gebreyohannes-Royster transformed into a vibrant “mercado.” Its emerald walls are hung with colorful woven baskets, and the ceiling is draped with nets in saturated golds and greens, recalling a Caribbean fishing port. 

“What makes these big metropolitan cities so special is often the ability to feel transported within this city, right?” says Gebreyohannes-Royster. “Setting up shop and planting roots in a town that we feel so connected to is a blessing.”

Beyond transporting guests to faraway locales, the team behind Meski hope to transplant some diversity and energy across the Bay. It’s just a little bit of The Town imported into The City.