ForLook Interior Design

We’ve decided to add a new category to our blog called good restaurants. I know some people will ask what that’s got to do with interior design? Quite a lot, actually.

Most of us go to a restaurant because it was recommended to us or it had a good advert or review in the paper - or simply because we just like the look of it. Well, I tend to do the latter. I first judge a restaurant by its appearance - from an aesthetic point of view (I know, it’s rather sad  - but I’m a designer after all)..

I can hear you say that a good restaurant is not about interior design – it’s about food.  Yes, kind of. I think it’s about the experience – and the surroundings (natural &/or built) play a significant part in this.

When you enter a restaurant, the first thing that has an impact on your senses is the decor; then the ambience of the place; then how comfortable the seating and tables are. Before you even look at the menu, you already have a preconception of the place, be it conscious or subconscious.

So it is important that a restaurant be well-designed but it doesn’t mean that the food should be forgotten. Unfortunately a lot of new or remodelled restaurants focus far too much on the look of the space & the food – rather than on the comfort level of the place and the taste of the food.  I’m sure you’ve been to one of those restaurants, where you are seated on uncomfortable (but funky!) chairs and/or at a table too small for a bon bouche, and/or so near to others that you can’t hear your own thoughts. Then there are the so-called trendy places that seem to provide food that complements the palette of the decor but not the palate of your mouth. Nouvelle cuisine has gone mainstream but lost its essence – that is a subtle fusion of flavours.

These places just drive me mad, because they use design to disguise sloppy cooking - and charge you a fortune for it. Don’t get me wrong – I’m a designer, so I’d be the first to argue for good design and the “right look” – but, a good restaurant should be one where the gastronomic experience wins over the visual effects.

Yet more and more of these places are opening around the world – places where style outdoes substance. The other day I went to new, hyped-up gastro-pub in Greenwich – we’d tried to book three times previously, but had no luck. Well, the food was just awful. The place had the necessary “modern pub” look, the ambience felt right, the food looked good on the plate – but actually tasted of nothing or just about everything…and then I realised that I’d been to far too many of these places over the last couple of years. What a waste of time and money! What’s happened to simple, flavoursome food?  Why does style now rule content?

So we, at ForLook, decided to find and write about restaurants that can provide memorable meals, rather than just a fashionable space in which to be and be seen.  Read more about the criteria of our good restaurant guide.