By Jeanne Tan / 17-03-2010

For today's discerning design-minded diners, going out to eat and buying food is often as much about the design experience as it is about gastronomy. To attract and keep customers, restaurants these days need to offer more than just a good meal, increasingly winning our stomachs through our eyes. 

Gestalten's latest design offering 'Eat Out! Restaurant Design and Food Experiences' showcases an extensive selection of places and spaces to eat focusing on the concepts which are used to create a unique dining experience. These days, design extends beyond the interior or architecture: a well considered dining experience encompasses the design of the menu to the uniforms of staff to the take away packaging. Furthermore, the design approach adopted filters into the overall presentation of the food itself.

The book takes readers through a spectrum of dining design: From Pop to Rustic Chic, Straight Forward, Perform, Open & Shut, The New Grandeur,  High Tech, Juxtapose and Graphic Spaces. Dutch designers feature strongly in the book, creating concepts for interiors, installations to futuristic eating probes. For those who have visited or live in The Netherlands, many of these places are well-loved places to fuel the stomach or mind.

Tjep.'s playful cover project Praq falls in the category 'Pop' which makes use of bright colours, delirious layering and patterns and larger-than-life design elements. The design of Praq 'welcomes families without looking like a kid's playground' using grown-up elements with a children's twist. 'Rustic Chic' restaurants seem to be popping up everywhere in the Netherlands these days, not surprising considering the strong connection of the culture to the countryside. Located in a converted Amsterdam chapel, Restaurant As designed by Studios Müller van Tol takes inspiration from rudimentary architectural and furniture elements, and natural basic materials. Small vegetable plots are found on the grounds as is a family of farm animals and smoke from the wood oven of the open kitchen drifts into the neighboring offices. Food-wise, there is no choice from the menu, only what's fresh that day - diners need only specify what they can't eat - and dishes are shared communally. At the Lloyd Hotel, Richard Hutten's design for the restaurant showcases the regional Dutch produce for sale on a wall of full-height open shelving, while UXUS Design take it to another level with their Rustic Luxury design for Ella Dining Room & Bar in Sacramento featuring a ceiling of reclaimed original timber window shutters.

'Straight Forward' spaces cut straight to the chase, presenting the food in a no-nonsense, unembellished and honest manner. Tampopo also by Studios Müller van Tol takes the chaos out of an Asian grocery store and transforms it into an immaculately organized (cuisine by country), white-tiled oasis of calm. RO & AD Architecten fashioned a timber greenhouse complete with its own furniture range made from plain birch plywood. Theatrical eating performances and acts fall under 'Perform' where it is compulsory for diners to play with their food. Marije Vogelzang is renowned for her choreographed edible experiences, Keuken-Confessies created a Curiosity Food Cabinet and Martijn Engelbregt's temporary open air restaurant Rest. was composed of a pyramid of stacked picnic tables, where diners feasted on food made from leftover ingredients and edible vegetation. Marieke van der Bruggen tempted visitors with a suspended forest of candy icicles in Garden of Delight. A 'New Grandeur' can be seen in the monumental scale of the Stanislavski interior at Amsterdam's Stadsschouwburg by IDING interior design. Simon Heijdens uses specially developed software to eavesdrop on diners' conversations to project a ceiling installation in 'High Tech' while Philips Design takes a provocative look into the future of eating with the Design Probes - 3D printed food anyone? Other designers featured include Onno Donkers, Concrete, Piet Boon Studio, Bearandbunny and Maurice Mentjens.

So what's for dinner tonight? Instead of Japanese, Italian or French cuisine, will it be a Pop, Rustic Chic or New Grandeur interior? 

Add to favorites