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[title]If you’ve dined at Boia De, Walrus Rodeo or the New Schnitzel House, you know designer Paula Lemme’s signature soulful style. Her creative vision and innovative designs achieve a quality that’s increasingly hard to find: authenticity. Lemme knows that today’s diners crave something more than just delicious food—they want an experience. But in Miami, that experience doesn’t always have to include an over-the-top, multi-million-dollar build-out. It can be as simple as a feeling.
Lemme likes doing things “a little bit old school,” she tells us from her office in east Fort Lauderdale, just days out from the birth of her second child. “Sometimes I like to grab books and inspiration and just sit down, you know, touch samples.”
When Lemme begins a new design project—whether it’s a luxury resort in the Caribbean or a new restaurant in Miami—she gets to know the essence of the owners and operators. She asks them to bring her pictures, books and objects they love.
We sat down with Paula Lemme, the bold principal and owner of the By Lemme design studio, to learn more about her process and outlook. We wanted to know: How did a small, chef-owned restaurant like Boia De, tucked into an unassuming strip mall next to a coin laundry, become a beloved instant classic, achieving a coveted Michelin star?
There are so many restaurants that are highly invested...but they lack that soul.
The answer isn’t just the food, and it translates well beyond the restaurant business. “I think what makes that difference is things are thought out and they’re authentic to the people who operate it,” she says. “There are so many restaurants that, you know, they’re highly invested, the location is great, but they lack that soul.”
Lemme recalls meeting with Adam Gersten, the man behind Gramps Wynwood and Gramps Getaway, about the design concept for his recently opened German restaurant, the New Schnitzel House. He brought her a stack of 20 books. “It was great…all pictures of things that he loved,” she says.
Altogether, the completed New Schnitzel House evokes nostalgia in its details, like the mirrored walls and Bauhaus color palette. Lemme loves working with materials that have been torn out of old places and repurposing them in a new and interesting way. Those mirrors were old retail slat walls once considered “cheesy,” but in their new home, they’re “cool and funky,” Lemme explains.
Boia de, with its intimate and quirky charm, is another great example. Our pick for Miami’s most romantic restaurant has that palpable feeling: that this space was created with love. From the intentional lighting and custom exclamation wallpaper in the dining room to the cheeky primates on the walls of the bathroom, the entire restaurant has an unmistakably human touch.
“I’m huge on bathrooms being really important in restaurants,” says Lemme. “If you go into a bathroom and it’s not impactful, you’re just showing you don’t care.”
Lemme’s personal approach to design was the perfect collaboration for Boia De’s chef-owners and real-life couple, Alex Meyer and Luciana Giangrandi. “I’ve known Luci for a long time,” Lemme says. “She and her sister used to go to my school. I always knew her as the other girl with the funky glasses,” she recalls, donning a pair of vintage-inspired tortoise shell readers.
Born in Buenos Aires and raised in Miami, Lemme drew her earliest inspiration from her grandparents, who were both architects and engineers. “Their house was not for kids...It was a funky, sculptural house,” she laughs. Her father was an engineer and her mother studied mathematics, though she ended up designing houses in Miami.
“I loved watching my mom draw when I was four or five,” she says, “I was fascinated.” Lemme cites her childhood, her mother and her travels as having the most influence and impact on her career.
I loved going to this fishery in Cabo...It just made me feel warm.
Lemme returned to Buenos Aires to study architecture and design, then landed her “dream job” with a large hospitality firm. She was part of the team responsible for the ground-up concept and design for resorts in Mexico and the Dominican Republic. This meant being in an airport four times a week, but there was a huge upside.
“We would go around in Mexico sourcing things in a sprinter van,” Lemme says. “We’d go and spend a week in Cabo. This is the best way to research.”
It was during those extensive travels and research trips that Lemme would hunt for restaurants frequented and adored by locals. She never ordered takeout. She would always dine in and do her best people-watching, observing how guests interacted with the spaces, and how those places made her feel.
“I loved going to this fishery in Cabo. The place was funky,” she says. “It was not done by a designer, but it was so authentic. It just made me feel warm.”
When it comes to advice for anyone getting into design, Lemme emphasizes “the tactile part of it…you could be stuck in Pinterest boards and it never ends...Go out and see places and observe them. You have to experience it.”
Hospitality design is most definitely a career of love.
As for what's next, aside from the exciting project of growing her family, Lemme has another highly anticipated collaboration with Boia De’s Alex and Luci in the works, along with a few hotel and restaurant projects.
And though “Hospitality design is most definitely a career of love,” she admits, Lemme reminds herself: “The designing of experiences is important to culture, and it’s done through the hospitality of care, details, delicacy, fun, nourishment—which all help bring about feelings.”