When the James Beard Foundation Awards are announced in early June, New York is guaranteed to be a winner — at least in the Outstanding Restaurant Design category, where, for the second straight year, the nominees are all Manhattan-based establishments. Adour, chef Alain Ducasse’s new restaurant at the St. Regis, the Japanese restaurant Morimoto in the meatpacking district, and the Italian eatery Centovini in SoHo all got the nod from the James Beard Foundation, whose annual awards recognize chefs, restaurants, and food writing. The dominance of the city in this category is so emphatic, in fact, that the foundation, through a quirk in its nominating process — designs are eligible for the nomination for three years after they make their debut — has allowed Morimoto to be nominated in both 2007 and 2008. “We’ve found that the strongest restaurant designs over the years have come from New York or Los Angeles, and overwhelmingly New York,” the architect who chairs the committee that administers the design award, Belmont Freeman, said. “It’s very hard to build a restaurant in New York that’s cheap. There’s a tradition of investing money and design thought into restaurant buildups.”

A look at the design of the three nominees offers insight into some of the country’s boldest trends in restaurant layout and décor.

Perhaps no movement in dining design is more evident to the average New York diner than the rise of the mega-restaurant, epitomized by the gargantuan spaces found on Tenth Avenue, including restaurateur Stephen Starr’s Morimoto — named for chef Masaharu Morimoto.

Glass walls that begin upstairs in Morimoto appear to continue on the basement level. Bathroom stalls are equipped with mirrors tricked out to show infinite reflections of suspended flowers. An undulating canvas ceiling in the dining room is meant to evoke the rakings in a Japanese Zen sandbox. Even Morimoto’s designer Tadao Ando — a vaunted Japanese architect — is a big deal.

Morimoto also signifies restaurant design’s current willingness to play with light and technology. The space’s most famous aspect is arguably a room-dividing wall of 15,000 clear plastic Ty Nant water bottles, backlit in shades of pale blue and green by hundreds of LED lights.

Centovini — whose interior space was the brainchild of restaurateur Nicola Marzovilla (I Trulli), together with Giuliano Fiorenzoli Architects and Murray Moss, the owner of the elite SoHo design store, Moss — also has a touch of LED in the night. A rectangular “glitterbox,” in which Swarovski crystals surround a hive of twinkling light, hangs over the bar. Elsewhere in the restaurant, the lighting is more conventional, but no less spectacular. Several ornate creations by master Murano firm Venini, dating from the 1920s to the 1970s (including one from Mr. Moss’s personal collection), hang over various tables. “Generally, all these entries have sophisticated lighting,” Mr. Freeman said. “That’s something that’s coming to the fore.”

Centovini, as the name suggests, is one of many new restaurants that take wine as their focus, seizing on the public’s current passion for fermented grapes. Wine is stored in full view in dozens of bins that line the walls. And one Swarovski chandelier is composed of a massing of red and off-white glass, shaped to look like grape clusters. “If 10 years ago every other restaurant design had an open kitchen, in the last couple years we’ve been seeing wine collections on display,” Mr. Freeman said.

The posh, library-like Adour, a recent venture of Mr. Ducasse, takes vino-centrism to a whole new level. Designed by Shawn Sullivan, a principal with the Rockwell Group, the space’s rugs and banquets are the color of Burgundy in the central dining room, and the color of Champagne in the outer alcoves. Treasures from the cellar — old bottles of Dom Pérignon, Château Lafite Rothschild, and port — are visible inside custom-made, armoire-like cases. Four angled tables, situated behind corner banquettes, function as “landing pads” for ordered bottles; there, patrons can view the decanting process. Most eye-catching of all is the small bar, where a finger touching a wine-bottle icon on the goatskin counter will bring up a computerized projection of the entire wine list.

One development not seen in this year’s roster of nominees — downsizing — may be the hallmark of the category in years to come. After all, a troubled economy and opulent décor do not mix. “It’s becoming more and more difficult to spend money on design, because things are costing too much,” Mr. Starr of Morimoto said, noting that his future restaurant projects will incorporate simpler schemes. “I could not do this restaurant again today.”