Melbourne restaurants scoop pool at Eat Drink Design Awards 2016
Melbourne restaurants seem to be the best in the country when it comes to design excellence.
They have taken out four of the top six spots at the Eat Drink Design awards which celebrate the best designs in Australia and New Zealand.
Higher Ground Café
Higher Ground, which has been designed by DesignOffice, took out the Best Café Design prize. What was once a power station sitting in Melbourne’s CBD has already picked up the winning Café of the Year honour in The Age Good Food Guide 2017 awards. Critics have compared it to a plush hotel lobby with lots of space on various levels.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, designed by Bates Smart, picked up Best Restaurant Design. Critics say the interior of the place is “squishy” but it has a “deep comfort, both literally and conceptually”.
Luna Croissanterie, which was designed by Studio Esteta, won the Best Retail Design prize. Starting out as a tiny hole-in-the-wall shop in Elwood in 2012, it moved to an expansive converted warehouse space in the backstreets of inner city Fitzroy. It features long, splayed LED lights on the ceiling inspired by Star Wars and features a Lune Lab at the centre, a glass cube that looks like a space station. Climate-controlled at a perfect 18 degrees, it’s the space where pastries are prepared.
Well-known CBD restaurant Bacaro, a popular meeting spot for just about everyone in Melbourne, has been inducted into the Eat Drink Design Awards' Hall of Fame. A product of Chris Connell Design, Il Bacaro’s atmospheric dining room has been left unchanged since the place opened in 1995.
The Eat Drink Design Award judges are industry luminaries: interior designer Hamish Guthrie (director of Hecker Guthrie), interior architect Adele Winteridge (Foolscap Studio), Sydney Morning Herald chief restaurant critic Terry Durack, food and lifestyle publisher Julie Gibbs, and Cameron Bruhn (editorial director at Architecture Media).
by Leon Gettler, November 9th 2016
