The Ritz Carlton in Budapest opens after an extensive redesign of the former Le Meridien Hotel. The Ritz Carlton have worked with award winning hospitality interior and branding design studio, B3 Designers, to create the standalone restaurant Deak St. Kitchen and Kupola Lounge café within the hotel. The new hotel, with its 170 guest rooms, 30 luxury suites and Deak St. Kitchen & Kupola Lounge, opened earlier this month and is the first Ritz Carlton to open in Budapest.
With bold masculine undertones and a sophisticated design, Deák St. Kitchen restaurant makes a striking impression, with its deep rich leather seating, walnut tables and Hungarian point timber flooring. These elements are juxtaposed against brighter details like the rose gold trim on the lighting and furnishings and the antiqued mirror paneling around the room. This, together with the carefully curated artwork, elegantly finishes off the space. The restaurant opens out onto its namesake, Deák Street, the famous Budapest ‘fashion’ street. One of the main successes of the restaurant’s design is its accessibility from street level, with its inviting entrance, dining terrace and bi-folding doors – it is a welcoming restaurant with an independent feel. Mark Bithrey, Director at B3 Designers says “It was a great opportunity to work with the Food and Beverage team at Ritz Carlton and convert an under used hotel breakfast room into a destinational restaurant that is popular with both hotel guests and locals”.
In contrasts to the decadent detailed interior, B3 Designers created a branding design that is clean and casual, featuring a collection of hand illustrated food and wine references used throughout the menus and interior. The logo incorporates the year the restaurant was opened, being 2016, as a modern indicator together with a more traditional logo aesthetic, inspired by the labeling of wine bottles. Branding materials include textured ‘butcher’ like paper, wooden clipboards with heavy metallic clips and embossed leather menus.
Adjoining the restaurant is the lounge café, Kupola Lounge. The lounge takes its name from the soaring dome ceiling feature which dominates the large space. As most of the building’s internal architecture is protected, B3 Designers strove to celebrate these features by creating an internal skin mirroring the classic architecture by choosing elegant furniture with a timeless material pallet of rose gold, marble, velvet and walnut.
To achieve a sense of luxury within the branding, B3 Designers took inspiration from connoisseur culture with emphasis on subtle, simple elegance. Their material choice included leather menu covers in a deep blue tone, reminiscing of the blue tones of the Danube River which runs through Eastern Europe, together with a simple, impactful logo design.
Deák St. Kitchen serves a variety of Hungarian-inspired dishes, created using local seasonal ingredients, and freshly grilled meat & fish, alongside one of the city’s finest selections of indigenous Hungarian wines and beers while Kupola Lounge serves a traditional and modern breakfast menu while in the afternoon offering light lunch in an elegant and warm setting.
