2013 Eat-Drink-Design Awards: Best Restaurant Design

Best Restaurant Design
Farmhouse by Nicholas Gurney

Jury comment

With minimal but precise moves Farmhouse creates a bucolic dining fantasy, not only in the midst of dense urbanity but also in a highly competitive gastronomic area. Working within a compact volume and with a restrained, elemental palette of design elements this tiny restaurant diligently pares back the dining experience to its essentials, without parsimony or lack of conviviality. Its ingenious single operable table and intimate connections with the servery and kitchen heighten the sense of being at a dinner party in a French farmhouse, yet there is no pastiche or unauthenticity about this place. Every decision has been made with clarity and criticality – to provide everything you need, and nothing you don’t. Farmhouse succeeds as much for what it chooses not to do, as for what it does. This ethic carries through to its courageous conception of the food offering: each sitting is a communal affair, with no menu, no choice, and the food is prepared by emerging chefs who cook, serve and clear the table. A refreshing challenge to mainstream approaches to restaurants, Farmhouse is an exquisitely focused venture, simultaneously modest and noble.

Design statement

The union of design and craft is central to Farmhouse. The project champions a holistic approach and a shared aspiration to use recycled, salvaged and reclaimed material. A farmhouse is simple, rustic, enduring and hardworking. The materials used are relevant; they make sense; they are not being used simply to demonstrate sustainable initiative or intent. The concept that is Farmhouse highlights the way an original and innovative concept can be integral to the success of a restaurant. Farmhouse is the direct outcome of design thinking and collaboration.

Farmhouse
4/40 Bayswater Road
Kings Cross NSW 2011
farmhousekingscross.com.au