These four creative restaurants in Belgium and Spain left us more than satisfied. With top-quality cuisine and stunning interior design, these restaurants are a multi-sensory experience to remember.
El Nacional
Located in the center of Barcelona is a unique multi-restaurant cuisine experience, El Nacional. This luxury food hall combines four concepts into one grand venue providing different experiences within the same location.
Using reclaimed materials, the Lázaro Rosa-Violán interior design team managed to fuse four restaurants and four bars into one cohesive modernist garage venue. While the four locations are unique in certain elements, such as texture and color, others, such as large windows and metal pillars, bring the whole together, supplying a good unity.
The four restaurants feature meat, fish, tapas and rice, and a fast delicatessen. While the bars individually specialize in beer, wine, cava, and cocktails. There is something for everyone to enjoy!
Le Pristine
Opened just June of last year by three star Michelin chef Sergio Herman, Le Pristine has quickly grown to be one of Antwerps hottest spots. We were pleasantly surprised to see what Space Copenhagen designers created with this stunning interior using the exposed concrete columns and brick walls as a backdrop for their theme.
Dutch designers Maarten Baas and Bertjan Pot collaborated on a whimsical reception desk and lined it with exposed light bulbs to greet guests. Featuring a dark color palette of green, black, and grey may seem somber. But it is offset with pops of color and unique light displays that bring intrigue.
A sculpture titled Hacked Cheese by Dutch artist Frederik Molenschot is suspended from the dining room ceiling, while the bar is made from pink resin with a block of the same resin coupled with white neon to create a fun light installation behind.
Le Leopard
Le Leopard sits within French fashion house Darial, both housed in a once abandoned modernist textile warehouse in Barcelona’s BarLe Dreta de l’Eixample neighborhood. The brasserie features chic French-Italian haute cuisine amid a lavish interior inspired by the 1963 film “The Leopard.”
The interior design inspires awe with gold-leaf ceilings, and red velvet banquettes. The space leads naturally to a ground-floor gallery overlooking a lush, cloistered courtyard.
The hidden garden, with vaulted ceilings and concrete design elements, doubles as a temporary exhibition space for collaborations with contemporary artists and leaves you feeling like you’ve found a secret paradise in the middle of Barcelona’s trendiest neighborhood.
Buddy Buddy
This small 70-meter café and nut butter shop is a design lover’s dream. The cafe has a very unique design concept split dramatically right down the middle.
Devised by Amsterdam studio HOP Architects, Buddy Buddy features a two-tone interior. The far side is a setting with metallic red paint, high barstools, and bronze mirrors. The other side of the cafe features milky-white colors and large, open windows with lower seating options.
However, the most dramatic feature is the intersection of the two. In the middle of the cafe, the color meets in sharp contrast and provides the perfect dramatic background for images.
Over the past few design journies we have taken, these four dining establishments make us longing to go back. Stay tuned for our next round-up of creative restaurant after our next travels.
