Amaro Hour
Chapel Street has never been short on places to eat. The imperative, then, is to stand out in a city awash with restaurants, wine bars and late-night spaces. Enter Studio Amaro, the Italian dining room and basement bar from Melbourne hospitality group Commune. A partner of LEIF, the venue reflects a shared appreciation for atmosphere, tactility and the way material choices shape the diner’s experience. We sat down with Studio Amaro’s interior designer, Wendy Bergman of Bergman & Co., to chat materiality, mood and the making of a memorable dining room.
Photography by Tom Blachford
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Taste Makers
Great hospitality is felt in the details: a warm greeting from your waiter, the hum of a kitchen in motion, the ambience and light, textures and scents that extend far beyond the dining room.
Australia has countless venues that exude taste, warmth and the utmost care for diners. Top-notch food, exceptional service and a little Leif love are just a booking away.
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Places of play
Hospitality design is often discussed through the details you can point to: the curve of a bar, the material palette, the way lighting behaves after dark, how styling can frame a menu or sharpen the mood of a room. But for Adelaide-based architecture and interiors practice studio gram, founded by Graham Charbonneau and Dave Bickmore, the measure of a venue is less about how it looks in isolation, and more about what it gives back once people are inside it.
Two such venues – Leigh Street Wine Room and Fino Vino, both LEIF partner venues brought to life by studio gram – speak clearly to this sensibility. Here, we caught up with Charbonneau and Bickmore to talk more about craft, context, and designing places where guests can shake the dust.
Photography by Josie Withers
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Good vibrations
If Sydney has a current fixation with pared-back minimalism, Superfreak politely ignores it. Located on Enmore Road in Marrickville, the café – designed by the Sydney-based architecture and interior design firm YSG Studio and housed in the former (famed) Serendipity ice-cream factory – leans into texture, colour and a certain 70s-inflected sociability. Think cork underfoot, yellow walls and glossy green datums – a “soulful sanctuary” spinning plates of “nourishing eats from sunup to mid-afternoon,” describes YSG’s Founding Director Yasmine Ghoniem. It’s confident, nostalgic, slightly surreal, and – importantly – entirely committed to mood.
A partner venue of LEIF, Superfreak and YSG reflect our shared sensibility, grounded in tactility, atmosphere, and the emotional resonance of well-considered spaces. We caught up with Ghoniem and the venue’s co-owner Mike Ico to talk about how the future classic came to be, and why looking backwards can sometimes be the most progressive move forward.
Photography by Phillip Huyhn.
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