Arches of sunshine warmly illuminate this Korean fried hen restaurant in New York’s Flatiron district, designed by Rockwell Group.
Coqodaq is the brainchild of restauranteur Simon Kim’s Gracious Hospitality Administration, the group behind the Michelin-starred and James Beard-nominated COTE Korean Steakhouse.
The brand new restaurant affords an elevated tackle conventional Korean-style fried hen, encouraging diners to take pleasure in nuggets topped with caviar and to pair its “bucket” dishes with champagne.
“Designed by Rockwell Group as ‘the cathedral of fried hen’, the restaurant design delivers a daring, but refined eating expertise that skillfully integrates Korean and American influences, inserting them on the forefront of this engaging culinary journey,” stated the restaurant crew.
To create the fitting ambiance for this expertise, Rockwell Group opted for a darkish and moody inside of wealthy supplies and low, heat lighting.
“Our aim was to seize the essence of this distinctive idea and progressive strategy to fried hen and translate it right into a memorable eating expertise,” stated founder David Rockwell.
Upon entry, friends are invited to scrub their fingers in leathered soapstone basins, above which a row of pill-shaped gentle bands glow inside a bronzed mirror that additionally wraps onto the facet partitions.
Previous the host stand, an space with 4 high-top tables affords an area reserved for walk-ins in entrance of garage-style home windows.
The principle eating space is fashioned by a collection of inexperienced leather-based and darkish walnut cubicles on both facet of a central walkway.
A collection of illuminated arches soar overhead, fashioned from rippled glass and bronze modules that resemble effervescent oil in a deep-fat fryer.
On the finish of this procession, a mirrored wall displays glowing arches and creates the phantasm of doubled area. In the meantime, plaster wall panels characteristic a crackled impact, nodding to the crispy pores and skin of the fried hen.
“The fabric palette was pushed by a want to encompass diners in an envelope of heat, making a joyful place to be at any time,” Rockwell stated.
Rockwell Group creates atmospheric interiors for Perelman Heart in New York
Further sales space seating to at least one facet is adopted by the lengthy bar, topped with black soapstone, fronted by tambour wooden and backed by a luminous black liquor shelf.
The restaurant’s intensive champagne assortment – which it claims is the biggest in America – is displayed inside glass cupboards put in with globe-shaped lights that seem like big bubbles.
“Simon and I share the idea that crucial factor about eating places is how they ritualise coming collectively for a shared, celebratory expertise and Coqodaq gives the right template for that,” stated Rockwell.
Since Tony Award-winning designer based his eponymous agency in New York 40 years in the past, the studio has grown to a 250-person operation with further workplaces in Los Angeles and Madrid.
Amongst Rockwell Group’s current hospitality tasks are the Metropolis restaurant and foyer areas on the Perelman Arts Heart (PAC NYC) and Zaytina contained in the Ritz-Carlton Lodge.
We have featured a couple of fried hen eating places not too long ago, together with a Nineteen Sixties-influenced spot in Los Angeles and a neon-illuminated eatery in Calgary.
The images is by Jason Varney.