Rachel Cope, a thirtysomething in Oklahoma City who loves Garth Brooks, owns five unique restaurants, and she’s curated everything for each, from soundtracks (she’s an amateur DJ) to menu items (Hamburglar and Notorious P.I.G. at her pizza parlor, Empire Slice House). The walls of Empire Slice are totally punk rock, transporting the visitor to the Lower East Side. Cope shared her do’s and don’ts on getting that Instagrammable look.

--“Do have Instagrammable visual features,” Cope said. “Each of our stores features one or more iconic pieces that are bound to catch photographic attention, from beautiful one-of-a-kind murals to pink elephants to neon signage with a message like ‘don’t kill my vibe.’”

--“Do be intentional with your design. Our hope when you walk into our ramen shop or Japanese pub is that you feel like you’ve stepped into the alley restaurants of Tokyo with dim but purposeful lighting and warm wood tones. At Empire Slice House, the postered walls are meant to mimic NYC subway collages.”

--“Don’t use reclaimed wood — it’s over!”

--“Do label gender-neutral single-stall bathrooms — if you’re not doing this for your solo bathrooms, you’re behind the times,” Cope said.

Gastropubs in this country don’t much resemble the smaller family-run pub restaurants in the English countryside Andrew Miller remembers from his youth.

Miller, a dual-citizen of the U.S. and the U.K., is founder of Out to Lunch Hospitality, which recently debuted the vintage supper club Good Fortune in Chicago’s Logan Square, designed as an “intimate, concise space,” similar to neighboring restaurants Fat Rice, Rootstock, Lula Café and Boeufhaus. “Concise” does mean smaller in this context, Miller said.

“Choosing to have a smaller restaurant addresses two factors: finances and hospitality,” Miller said. “Obviously with a smaller build-out, there’s less overhead and you can rely on a smaller staff which not only saves on labor but allows you to operate more like a family unit. This, in turn, allows for more personalized interaction with the guest. We’re able to touch every table for every party each night at our 44-seat restaurant. I couldn’t imagine being able to do that plus provide the level of hospitality I wish to employ at an expansive 200-seat restaurant.”

The intimate aspect is at work in the development of TAP Gastropub, set to open in January in Somerset Hills, a boutique hotel in New Jersey’s historic town of Warren. The “European style” gastropub with marble and gold accents and lots of light will be open for breakfast, lunch and dinner and will feature 20 beers on tap.

According to the team behind the hotel project, Valor Hospitality Partners, today’s gastropub should be “a modern-day version of what for centuries has been known as the community public house, for friends to gather.”

Tiki restaurant culture first took hold in this country after the second World War. By the early 2000s, a resurgence was brewing like a long-dormant volcano.

That’s when Dieter Cartwright, principal and co-founder of Dutch East Design, a New York-based branding and interior design studio specializing in hospitality, was bartending at Trailer Happiness in London, during what Cartwright calls “a key moment in tiki culture’s history.” At that point, speakeasy-style establishments had gotten “a little too overthought, a little too precious.” As an antidote, tiki’s vibe is “much more light-hearted.”

Flash forward to today, and tiki restaurants have pitched their tiny umbrellas once again, but the best examples have set sail far away from too-sweet and too-silly drinks to “terrifically high standards for making drinks,” Cartwright said, mixing authenticity with “fresh ingredients to produce well-balanced drinks with plenty of punch — often in punch format.”

Design-wise, tiki is moving from tropical kitsch to dark, moody and Mid-Century modern.

“In a cosmopolitan setting, far from beaches and coconut groves, there are plenty of cues for contemporizing the tiki theme,” Cartwright said. “You only have to look to other strong design influences of the same era, such as Mid-Century modern. By showing some restraint in design, and responding to context, you can make tiki your own.”

Dutch East Design has done just that with the design of Strangers Club in Panama City with 2,500-square feet across two floors with a balcony and awning. Original wood architectural details of the old building are restored and the local vernacular preserved. Stucco walls were stained natural sage green-to-white and 100-year-old shutters cover the bar’s back wall. Open wood slats and cushions make up custom banquettes.

“Who remembers the Samoan Pub in Lock, ‘Stock and Two Smoking Barrels?’” Cartwright said. “Sometimes a concept can turn its back completely on context, to not transport you to somewhere else, but to actually root you right where you are.”

As San Francisco Chronicle food writer Soleil Ho recently pleaded in a column, “Please, bar folks — help a girl out.”

She relates her experience, which is shared by many who carry purses and backpacks. “You’ve been there before, I’m sure: bent over the underside of a bar or restaurant counter, patting its surface like a gangster looking for hidden microphones. And then, when a hook doesn’t appear, you gracelessly drape your coat over a bar stool or balance your bag on your lap.

“Like a dress with pockets, the purse hook is an everyday design feature that is so practical its absence feels like a betrayal of common sense and human decency,” Ho writes.

No.

“No way. In spite of the fire department’s best efforts, I think open kitchens are more relevant than ever. It’s more than a trend; it’s a philosophy. Dutch East Design just completed a restaurant in Brooklyn — Oxalis — which has the kitchen basically at the entrance, with all stages of preparation on display. I think customers seek more and more a closer engagement with the process, and not for their meal to be an exhibit that mysteriously appears from behind a set of swinging doors.”

—Dieter Cartwright, principal and co-founder, Dutch East Design

Maybe

“I think it works great for food-driven concepts but it’s unnecessary for other concepts. I do not need to see you cooking my food while going to a bar, but I also appreciate watching an extremely talented kitchen team working at a food-driven concept. I ultimately believe that they will stay, but we will see a decrease in the amount of them over time … I don’t think they’re gaining in popularity.”

—Tyler Rothenberg, beverage director and assistant general manager, Handcraft Kitchen & Cocktails, Charleston, S.C.

No

“I don’t think open kitchens will ever go away. They have always existed since humans began cooking around fires during ancient times. I don’t view open kitchens as a trend; these are tribal origins that cannot be hidden.”

—Ignacio Cadena, Cadena + Asociados Concept Design, Mexico City

Is the open kitchen going away, or getting more open? At Tortello, Chicago casual-dining and fresh pasta shop, brings the kitchen way into the forefront with street-view pasta making, designed by Siren Betty Design, local all-women firm.