Michael Chow’s house in Holmby Hills has come up for sale. The Mr. Chow’s restaurant founder’s home is as extravagant and, yes, tasteful as one might imagine. But the check will run you almost $80 million.

Stylistically, the house jumps around quite a bit; the natural metaphor is of a particularly delicious confluence. Chow designed it himself.

This is a postmodern home. The exterior architecture was inspired by the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid. It blends traditional Mediterranean tropes with contemporary sensibilities. It weaves a series of reclaimed materials—from 400 year-old columns to renaissance Florentine ceilings to carved front doors from Colonial Mexico—into a whole. The historicity of these materials give the approach substance, bringing not just reference and wit, but historical narrative into the house. It’s a particularly creative form of flashy.

The 31,000 square-footer flows outward from a courtyard atrium, a source of liberation. As it moves along, it freely establishes and breaks moods as it progresses. A salon and a library present distinct moods, with deco influence fusing with a baroque chandelier in one, and an antique red marble fireplace set off beautifully by the fundamental visual contrast of ebony and travertine in the other.

The studio features a home cinema where dream-like blue melds with the pool that is visible through its windows.

The house dates to 2005, and was seven years in the making.