Plastic Bread box,Kitchenware tool-Art of the Cocktail: Sable Kitchen & Bar Mixes Up Design

When guests enter the upcoming Sable Kitchen & Bar in Chicago, designed by San Francisco-based Puccini Group, Plastic Bread box they may have trouble immediately recognizing that they are in  Kitchenware tool  a restaurant and not a high-end bar. That’s because the property, attached to the soon-to-open Hotel Flatware sets Palomar (April 2010), welcomes visitors with a 1940s Freudian-style lounge area and two large mixology stations to bring the art of the cocktail to life.

“We started looking back at when the art of the cocktail was really famous and really popular, and it took us back to the 1940s and 50s in Chicago when the mob outfit was running the city,” says Robert Polacek vice president and creative director for Puccini Group. “We were looking at how things were put together, the same way a cocktail is put together—you have all the ingredients that need to come together to make that special drink.”

The entire design of the restaurant—from the layout, to the chairs and tables, to the artwork on the walls and the bar—encompasses the notions of mixology, in a style that Polacek terms as sexy industrial. “We used the word industrial, but we really mean we looked at the mechanics of how thing were put together.” For example, he says, the intimate dining area in the back of the restaurant, which features tables that expose their bolts and metal side banding, is enlivened by an expo-styled kitchen where guests can see all the ingredients of their meal being mixed together by the chefs.