Chairs and Tables and Things

Cute idea, would work at home too. I like the repetition along...

Thu, 05 May 2011 11:36:13 +1000

Cute idea, would work at home too. I like the repetition along the wall, but you’d need a fairly large space for this to work without it looking overdone or crowded, I imagine.

herdofblack:

Love the decals with lighting placed on top. This is one of the restaurants in “Gusto:A Guide to Restaurant Design.”

Elle Decor's 2011 A List- Designers They Love

Thu, 05 May 2011 07:10:45 +1000

Elle Decor's 2011 A List- Designers They Love

…just a little bit creepy. Check out the teeny tiny Hello...

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 13:38:00 +1000

…just a little bit creepy. Check out the teeny tiny Hello Kitty abseiling off the chandelier!

rochila:

Hello Kitty Restaurant Interior

Love the recessed speakers in the ceiling, seamlessly integrated...

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 13:35:48 +1000

Love the recessed speakers in the ceiling, seamlessly integrated into the design.

Via giopiane:

Abbot Kinney, Los Angeles

Designed by Modern Arc

‘Particularly compelling is the industrial chandelier substitute: mismatched bulbs hung in clusters from an oval hanging meat hook, inspired by “the chaotic mess created by circuitry boards,” according to the designers at Modern Arc.’ -Article by Remodelista

Cibi, Melbourne

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 16:32:37 +1000

Cibi, Melbourne

Cibi: Head, Hands, Heart

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 12:34:00 +1000

Open and inviting, a non-pretentious converted warehouse.

If you’re interested in design, and live in Melbourne, there’s a good chance you’ve been to Cibi. I hadn’t, until last week. But now I’d like to go as often as I can, I’d move in if I could.

Cibi is a cafe with a design store attached. Owner Zenta Tanaka is an architect, and the cafe certainly reflects this. The cafe itself is a big open space with polished concrete floors and high ceilings, with an open kitchen. The space seems clean rather than over-accessorised. Industrial and vintage pieces, metal parts, weighing scales all perfectly placed. Silk screen hangings, and old Le Corbusier prints. There are lots of salvaged and op-shopped wood items as well.

All in all, the decor might ordinarily make a place seem somewhat pretentious, but Cibi seems to get away with it, I’m not quite sure why. Perhaps because the owners and the staff are entirely unpretentious themselves.

I had a traditional Japanese breakfast, which was excellent. The homemade miso is almost enigmatically yummy, I don’t know what they put in it, but its the most exciting miso I’ve had. Lots of bits in it. Tofu and seaweed and also other secret things. The grilled salmon was also perfect, and the coffee was alright. Unfortunately, the waitress managed to spill some hot tea on my lap as she brought me my pot of earl grey, but she was really very apologetic. And thankfully I was wearing jeans.

Cibi’s exhibition on Japanese utensils was a highlight for me- its temporary, but Cibi sells an assortment of things year round in their store. Everything oozes Japan-cool. I think their black cutlery has proven particularly lustworthy, as its been showing up in design shoots and restaurants all over town (Inside Out has used it, as does Andrew McConnell at Cutler & Co). As described on their website, “KOBO AIZAWA BLACK cutlery: beauty as objects, functional as tools, sexier than your boyfriend”. Can’t say it better myself.

I spent alot of time at breakfast thinking, “When I grow up and buy a house, this is what it needs to look like”. Basically, Cibi is a really great place to hang out. No one will rush me, I’ll have a bazillion design and architecture magazines to browse through, yummy food, and maybe some of the coolness of the space will rub off on me. One can only hope.

Matt Preston covered Cibi rather well, a while back. Read his review here.

And my photos are above.

Al Mahara restaurant with giant aquarium- Burj, Dubai

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 10:33:25 +1000

Al Mahara restaurant with giant aquarium- Burj, Dubai:

Interesting shot of an interesting restaurant- The Al Mahara restaurant at the Burj Al Arab in Dubai. As described further by photographer David Clarke, the Al Mahara (the Oyster) restaurant at the Burj has a giant aquarium with a dedicated team and a marine biologist looking after the 2500 fish in it.
As you’d expect from a seven-star hotel, I guess.
I’m not entirely sure what that fuzzy stuff on the walls is…

Reblogged from Inspirational Interiors.

Misuzu's, Albert Park

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 23:23:00 +1000

Yummy home-cooked Japanese in somewhat strangely attired surroundings.

I’ll start by saying the food we had was absolutely lovely. If they have their agedashi prawn and calamari dumplings, get them, they’re so super-yum! But the place itself was a little unusual. Its in a narrow little townhouse on the corner of Victoria Avenue and Bridport, a little bit of a thoroughfare. Dining at night, the mix of the pinky-red interior, yellow pendant lighting, magenta curtains screening the kitchen, and backlit bar were a bit overwhelming. Another thing that was a bit strange was the music- it seemed to fluctuate from jazz to Spanish easy listening.

The furnishings in dark wood were more appropriate, I think, as were the banquettes with Japanese cushion seats. There was an interesting suspended bottle rack hanging from the ceiling above the bar. My limited bar-accoutrement-vocabulary fails me, perhaps the photo will suffice. And the bar stools at the front window were stunning, I really wish I had a couple of them at home- they were a cross between industrial and Japanese-inspired in design, with black leather cushioning.

Overall, the food was good, but I don’t think the decor adds much to enhancing their meals.

Hardware Societe

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 22:29:00 +1000

I used to go to the now-deceased Beetroot with my best friend. We used to have hot chocolate with Persian fairy floss and marshmallows, and pretend we were interesting design people who worked in the CBD (rather than uni students on swot vac).
That was some time ago. We’ve moved on, and so have the owners of Beetroot- with Hardware Societe, across the lane.

The place has been blogged about ad nauseum now, and its hard to say anything that hasn’t already been said. And I do like it, but mainly for the food (which I suppose is the prime objective, after all, of a restaurant). I don’t love the decor, and I think perhaps I may be alone amongst the prevailing blogging community in Melbourne in saying that.

I think I feel the space is a little formulaic, and at odds with the food they serve. While the cuisine is meant to be Mediterranean- mainly French and Spanish inspired- the interior certainly isn’t. In fact, I felt the interior just wasn’t much of one specific thing- rather, a mish mash of design-ey things in a room. Dangling naked lightbulbs, Eames inspired chairs (phenomenally uncomfortable!). It didn’t add to my experience of the food.

It’s strange because there are things about Hardware Societe that I really do like. The grey-and-yellow colour combo. The Laguiole cutlery, in wood finish. Suspended macarons. But I hate the embossed black velvety baroque wallpaper. And the bar counter at the back of the room that’s the width of my palm and barely sufficient to rest anything, let alone a plate. Its not conducive to restive, happy, calm food-eating.

The food, however, is good and it keeps people queuing up every lunchtime. Yummy salted caramel macarons, and you might want to order an extra coffee for another hit of mini doughnut-ey goodness.

Sake, Sydney The only place we could get a table on a...

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 21:40:00 +1000

Kitchen

Edamame and Sashimi

Sashimi combo

Sake barrels

Sake! We are called Sake and have Sake.

Sake, Sydney

The only place we could get a table on a Saturday night without a reservation. Perfect, minimal, understated Japanese.

I was in Sydney for a conference and hadn’t had the foresight to plan every meal for the three days of my trip. After an hour of trekking around the Rocks, my phone battery running low from all my frenzied Urbanspoon researching, and getting knocked back from place after place (not once, not twice, three times!!), we finally managed to get in at Sake.

Sake is, in the absence of any other words that will do it justice, simply awesome.

I felt a bit like I’d entered some sort of futuristic ubercool William Gibson-esque novel. This is what 2011 was meant to look like! If only I’d thought to dress in more black.

The entry is up a set of stairs into the reception, with a giant sake bottle repository on the left, and a backlit blue neon bar- which gets quite packed and buzzy later in the night. The dining area itself is down some stairs, which open up into a huge, quite unexpected space.

The kitchen area itself is open, and circumscribed by a wooden bar counter, which is where we were happily seated. Incidentally, this gave us a great view of all the food prep- quite exciting, with lots of flame torch and chopping action- with the added benefit of the chefs serving the food directly to you. Open kitchens in restaurant designs often bring something extra to the dining experience, a little bit of behind-the-scenes, voyeuristic thrill. And you get to see when the chefs screw up, which is fun. I liked how it was done at Sake particularly, as the storage fridges, the washing up guy, everything was on display. Dinner and a show!

The cutlery and tableware was simple. Wooden snap-off chopsticks, ceramic asymmetric Japanese inspired plates. I really loved the muted lighting and dark wood. I thought the wall of sake barrels were quite cool, too, and were used throughout the night for photo ops by all the diners.

The food was pretty faultless.We had super fresh sashimi, and my dessert was very exciting- frozen Yuzu souffle, with this tasty tasty miso caramel sauce. If you like non-sweet desserts, I definitely recommend it. And the service was fantastic, there wasn’t a trace of the snobbiness we’d grown accustomed to during our trip.

Oh, and definitely visit the bathrooms during the night! Very cool.