Restaurant Design: Yoobi Sushi by Gundry & Ducker Architecture Ltd.

Starry, starry – that’s what my eyes are telling me when I look at Yoobi Sushi, a hospitality design that opened its doors on Lexington Street in Soho, London. Being the first temakeria in London, I reckon this call for a uniquely sophisticated design with high levels of detail intricacy – but I was so wrong. The Yoobi Sushi – particularly the restaurant interiors – demonstrated constraint thus resulted to a statement of uncluttered minimalism, which was heightened at its very best.

The specialty food served in this beautiful restaurant is temaki – a fresh sushi that was wrapped in a cone. It is a variety of sushi that originated from Brazil where the large population of Japanese outside of Japan resides. The food can either be via dine-in or take-out treats.

The restaurant design was carried out and completed by Gundry & Ducker Architecture Ltd and I must say I’m impressed with how they captured the atmosphere looking frozen in time. They stripped a previously known warehouse and exposed its original brick walls and then printed it with dark steel grey.

The concept was to create a design that will capture and combine the styles of all three countries – Brazil, Japan and London to demonstrate the brand’s color palette and design scheme. So, starry, starry – that’s how I perceived the entire design. Rarely can you find a flagship restaurant that bears a simple, clean-cut minimalistic design yet still exudes sophistication beyond imagination. This is Yoobi Sushi – an amazing restaurant in its entirety by Gundry & Ducker Architecture Ltd, you can take it or leave it either way it remains looking almost surreal. OK – maybe I’m pushing things a little too far but that’s how I see the place.

The designers managed to create a solution to combine the styles of three different countries by using few distinct features. The major surfaces within the restaurant interiors – except of course the floors and ceilings, received the light timber covering and the color palette was limited to the brilliant white sushi bar and the brand colors for the tables and chairs.

They took full advantage of the on-brand angular detail of the floor, tables, sushi bar, plinths and blocky benches to interconnect all the design elements. For me, this is one of the amazing interior designs I’ve come across – simply unique.