Restaurants

See all winners in the Time Out Eating & Drinking Awards 2008

WINNER, 'BEST DESIGN', TIME OUT EATING & DRINKING AWARDS 2008
Sake no hana
Designer: Kengo Kuma
Restaurateur Alan Yau is no stranger to the design category of Time Out’s Eating & Drinking Awards, having previously won with Hakkasan and been nominated for Yauatcha and Busaba Eathai. Sake no hana is a fine dining Japanese restaurant housed over two floors in one of the towers of the uncompromising 1960s Economist Building. Inside this unpromising location, Japanese architect Kengo Kuma has created a corner of downtown Tokyo with a complex cedar structure built with the craftsmanship of a Shinto shrine.

The ground-floor restaurant is more relaxed with the best seating up at the bar observing the chefs at work, while the more formal first-floor restaurant is reached via an escalator (part of the listed interior) through a black lacquered tunnel, sending a frisson of anticipation through the first-time visitor. The ambitiously expansive space is broken up by a mix of Japanese sunken seating, Western-style tables and chairs, and a glamorous front-lit bar. The theatrical creation is completed with structured black uniforms by Japanese fashion designer Naoki Takizawa. Even the dishes here look stunning.
Sake no hana, 23 St James’s St, SW1A 1HA (020 7925 8988). Green Park tube. Feature continues

RUNNERS-UP
L’Autre Pied
Owners and designers: David Moore and Shane Osborn
The sister branch to the highly regarded Pied à Terre, L’Autre Pied is stylish but understated, the emphasis being on the food. Beautiful hand-painted floral wallpaper and silk from UK specialist Fromental are the talking point here, adding a lightness and freshness to what would otherwise have been an uneventful space. A bold gold mirror at the top of the spiral staircase and a few Cocteau prints add subtle decorative touches. The shiny metal bar top feels authentically French but is, by all accounts, a nightmare to keep polished.
L’Autre Pied, 5-7 Blandford St, W1U 3DB (020 7486 9696/ www.lautrepied.co.uk). Bond St tube.

Le Café Anglais
Designers: Mike Stiff and Richard Blandy of Stiff + Trevillion
This big, bustling brasserie on the top floor of Whiteleys shopping mall is part of moves by the building’s owners to lure in shoppers with good food. Patrons Rowley Leigh and Charlie McVeigh carried wanted to capture an authentic brasserie atmosphere,and have done this by bringing in banquettes, the traditional brass rail, and specially made rôtisserie grills on which diners can watch chickens, partridges and legs of beef being slowly and succulently roasted. The design also responds to the original 1911 art deco interior with boxy lights, birds-eye maple wall panelling (dominant in the private dining room), Farrow and Ball paint tones, borrowed artworks, and a jazzy carpet specially woven from an original deco pattern. It sure beats the McDonald’s that preceded it on the same site.
Le Café Anglais , 8 Porchester Gardens, W2 4DB (020 7221 1415/ www.lecafeanglais.co.uk). Bayswater or Queensway tube.

Cha Cha Moon
Designers: Gilles & Boissier
The bold red and black façade scream ‘brand identity’ down Ganton Street, and it is no surprise that Cha Cha Moon is the blueprint for a new chain. Restaurateur Alan Yau’s Chinese noodle restaurant is a self-aware update of John Pawson’s early ’90s designs for Yau’s first restaurant, Wagamama in Bloomsbury – long communal wooden bench tables arranged perpendicular to the kitchen for efficient service, reached via a walk past the kitchen, with action on full display. Minimalism, at the cutting edge of interiors fashion fifteen years ago, has been toned down at Cha Cha Moon with soft touches such as leather padding on the banquettes and low-hung, intimate lighting. For diners, the ‘wow’ factor is created by a bamboo ceiling, though the kitchen boasts a state of the art noodle boiler and high-tech duck drier which you witness in action while queuing for a seat.
Cha Cha Moon, 5-21 Ganton St, W1F 9BN (020 7297 9800). Oxford Circus tube.

The Landau
Designer: David Collins Studio
Having already transformed the Langham Hotel’s Artesian bar last year, David Collins has worked his magic on its destination restaurant, rechristened as The Landau, and its private dining room The Postillion. The result is less ostentatious than Collins’ reputation leads one to expect, an elegant space that sets up pockets of intimacy such as private booths, banquettes, and semi-screened seating areas, without losing the sense of grandeur and sociability. An abstracted butterfly wall motif, begun in the Artesian, is carried through to suggest somewhere playfully modern, while materials such as leather seats, gilded timber wall panelling and embroidered napkins speak of pure class. The three bespoke brass chandeliers that hang over the dining room are noteworthy but not overpowering; the real drama lies in the grotto-like approach to the dining room along the vaulted wine cellar, lined with glass-fronted cabinets displaying some seriously pricey wine bottles.
The Landau, The Langham, Portland Place, W1B 1JA (020 7965 0165/ www.thelandau.com). Oxford Circus tube.