Design bites

Continuing from yesterday’s Restaurants in Residence update, our hunger takes us further into design-led food ventures today.

Design Bites put together by RIBA London and The Restaurant & Bar Design Awards is set to launch on 14 June with joint tours of awards shortlisted restaurants from the designers or architects, operators and chefs behind them.

A launch event at RIBA’s HQ, London W1, will bring together designer Ab Rogers with chef and hotelier Fergus Henderson and owner of the pan-Asian Inamo restaurant Noel Hunwick.

Macaulay Sinclair designed Inamo’s St James Restaurant last year, incorporating touchscreen digital table menus and a design inspired by natural forms and cellular structures.

Blacksheep designed the inaugural Inamo in 2008 in Soho, also incorporating the digital table top interactives and virtual menus, which we can vouch for as being very playful and psychedelic – herewith ‘rib eye’ tattoo.

Rogerson, Henderson and Hunwick will be discussing their own conceptual and design approaches to dining and explore how design is best executed from  the high-street to the high end.

The  Restaurant and Bar Design Awards will follow on 7 July with some shortlisted and winning restaurants included as part of the Design Bites programme later in the year – although Design Bites is still finalising which ones.

The Design Bites launch event takes place on14 June 2011 6.30-8.30pm at RIBA, 66 Portland Place, London, W1B.

RIBA is giving Design Week readers the chance to win a pair of tickets to the first Design Bites event on 14 June. Contact antonia.faust@inst.riba.org quoting ‘Design Bites in Design Week offer’ for the chance to win. Five pairs of tickets will be given away to the first to email in.