Hospitality · Industrial Chic
The Pepper Mill
A former banking hall turned into a dining room where the pass, the bar, and the tables can all work a full Saturday.
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The structural challenge
The room had been a banking hall. The mezzanine was cold and visually detached, and the kitchen sat in the wrong corner relative to the door. The chef wanted a pass the dining room could see. The landlord would not move the riser, and the lease gave us one shutdown window before service had to resume for a soft opening already announced. Acoustics in the hard hall would have made a full room shout.
The execution
We treated the riser as the organising wall. The pass sits on it, clad in blackened steel and a pale ceramic the kitchen can clean between seatings. Banquettes are leather the colour of palm oil, set against lime plaster that takes the edge off the steel. A felt ceiling and a timber screen bring the reverberation down so a conversation holds at the second seating. The mezzanine is now a quieter room for longer tables, reached by a stair that does not cross the servers' path. Four lighting scenes run from lunch to the last table, on a panel the floor manager can reach without calling a technician.