DESIGN

The heritage features of the original 100-year old building co-exist with striking modern design additions created by Melbourne designers Hecker Phelan & Guthrie. The designers have successfully translated the relaxed, comfortable and informal dining experience of Longrain Sydney into a Melbourne context.

Feature walls of sea-green ceramic ‘fish scale’ tiles welcome you at the restaurant’s main entrance and also coat the restaurant’s feature wall while wittily framing the open fishbowl design kitchen. Just like iridescent fish scales, the hues of these beautiful custom-made tiles change colour with the light during the flow of the day’s service.

As you dive further into the restaurant you are greeted by a colossal sea ‘anemone’ sculpture. This stunning piece was sculpted especially for the restaurant by Longrain’s favourite artist, Christopher Hodges, whose pieces are featured throughout Longrain Sydney’s space and on some
of the covers of Longrain’s Music CDs.

Three long wooden communal tables feature in the restaurant enabling visitors to dine in the Longrain tradition - banquet-style. This style of dining is essential to eating successfully at Longrain as the generous portions of the main dishes are designed to be shared. It is important to combine your meal with other dishes and eat it with steamed jasmine rice so that the correct balance of hot, sour, salty and sweet flavours
are experienced.

In addition to the long wood-grain communal tables, Longrain Melbourne has added four large circular wooden dining tables to the mix. These are complete with modern white-stone interpretations of the classic Lazy Susan (or should that be Lazy Suzie Wongs?). These are ingeniously created to further encourage the ‘sharing’ spirit of Longrain.

The appetites of the design junkies among Longrain’s clientele will be whet before they even get to the restaurant’s menu. Wooden ‘Wishbone’ chairs by Hans Wegner surround the three circular tables. Red/cream and dark-brown rattan ‘Flo’ stools by Patricia Urquiola add splashes of colour and texture to the bar space and the ‘Chandelier’ pendant lights, suspended over the circular dining tables are David Chipperfield’s. The dark stained wood of the restaurant’s interior is lightened up (as if exclamation marks on the design concept itself) with Vico Magistretti’s iconic white 70s inspired ‘Atollo’ table lamps featured at each waiter station.With Longrain now a resident of one of the world’s most vibrant bar capitals, it comes as no surprise that Longrain Melbourne’s cocktail bar is a central point of the restaurant’s design space. Dramatically set, centre stage, the bar cleverly divides the cocktail lounge and the restaurant’s main dining area. Made from solid American oak the bar is topped by exquisite white-marbled Calcutta stone.