In a dining era where the sizzle is as essential as the Kobe steak, where even raw chefs assume the role of celebrities, where competition for patrons is getting cannibalistic, there's one more key ingredient to the success, or failure, of a restaurant.

The restaurant designer.

In San Francisco, it's Pat Kuleto.

In Sacramento, it's Bruce Benning.

You probably don't know who Bruce Benning is. The guy couldn't cook a carrot. He prefers to dine at a table of anonymity. But he's a puppet master, pulling strings from the chandeliers. If you have ever dined at The Waterboy, or at a Paragary or Bistro 33 property, you have stepped into a Benning-staged atmosphere.

His signature is sedate, tasteful, contemporary, yet always this little peppering of theatrics.

Benning, like some rock star, has over the years accumulated an impressive list of design hits. When the first Cafe Bernardo opened on Capitol Avenue in 1993, Benning was the first to pour a stained (if uneven) concrete floor. People, in listing bentwood chairs, stared at the surface in disbelief.

When Centro Cocina Mexicano opened the next year, at J and 28th, Benning dressed a hellbent tableau in the front window – a skeleton astride a Matchless motorcycle on a road of broken tequila bottles.

At the Riverside Clubhouse, which opened in 2004, along with upholstering the bar front with cowhide, Benning, in the outdoor courtyard, installed a spectacular 40-by-10-foot water wall composed of rusted steel. More recently, at the latest 33rd Street Bistro, in El Dorado Hills, he crisscrossed the ceiling with a playful arrangement of acacia branches.

He seemed to be the first with everything, from cable lights to Venetian plaster to lurid LED displays.

Bruce Benning. Always hip. Always fun.

A stroll around the central city displays the importance today of restaurant stagecraft.

Look at Ella, or Mikuni or Mason's or Zócalo or G.V. Hurley's and Lounge on 20, and they all have one thing in common: eye-catching design. It's not enough to have sparrow portions and high-priced cocktails. There seems to be a design arms race being waged with white chaise lounges, scouring LED light beams and unisex bathrooms.

"I've been working as a designer in Sacramento since 1964," says Michael Dunlavey, whose studio baked a spate of La Bous, plus did the Buckhorn Grill on L Street. "There is a certain edginess here now. Clients are more aware of design and they want to take a chance."

"The high quality of design makes the destination unique," says Michael Ault, head of the Downtown Partnership. "We're selling that. Restaurants are continually trying to keep up."

"There is a new culture of people who appreciate how design and architecture can affect life," says Michael Heller, developer of MARRS, perhaps the most exciting design oasis in midtown. "People care now."

Randy Paragary, too, acknowledges the importance of design.

"You want good food and service," he says. "But design is equally important. People are attracted to a look."

And Benning's role in the hip city?

Well, he's no wingback chair, for sure.

"He is very talented. He has a great vision," says Valerie Hoffman, an architect whose firm, Lionakis Beaumont, designed both the clean 55 Degrees on Capitol Mall and Lounge on 20, at 20th and K.

"Bruce is our guy in design," says Heller. "He's been out there a long time fighting the fight."

Now, on a sublime morning designed by above, Bruce Benning sits at a crackled glass conference table in his studio, a former lithography shop at 18th and Q streets.

Benning is 59 years old. He has unblinking blue eyes, a cropped, sandy beard, a round face, a ruddy complexion. He is wearing a brand of designer jeans, a short-sleeved white linen shirt and black fisherman sandals. He is alternately abrupt, candid, sarcastic, immodest, impatient. But never effusive.

He does not fawn over fabrics; does not gush over some adorable side table. He is not disposed to any kind of fashion hyperbole. In fact, in most ways, he seems detached, even dispassionate about "things."

Call Bob Sylva, (916) 321-1135.