Come for the kebabs, stay for the champagne

What do you picture when you think of a kebab shop? Red signage, glossy tiles, operating-theatre lighting so bright all the night’s bad decisions are laid bare. But Kiez Kebab, a newly opened restaurant on Golborne Road in west London, is turning those expectations on their head.

“When we first met the owners, they explained the concept as Berlin techno meets high-end kebab – with champagne and natural wines,” says Lucas Che Tizard, cofounder of the design studio Red Deer, who led the interior design here. “My initial reaction was: ‘Fuck, yes, I love it!’”

The four friends behind Kiez met in Berlin and bonded over a shared love of the city’s music scene and its Turkish food. These two passions inspired their first restaurant. “It’s like skipping the bit between the club and the kebab,” Che says – a whole night out in a single venue. “Maybe there’s a bit of German efficiency there.”

The design work, which Che led alongside the client, Annabel Colterjohn, one of the co-owners, began with a palette of materials. “We knew we wanted it to be super-minimal,” Che says. In a nod to the spare aesthetic of many Berlin nightclubs, stainless steel is used liberally throughout. But they wanted to avoid the look of a test kitchen. “We didn’t want it to be too stark,” he says, “so we made the stainless-steel elements curved and fluid, to make them tactile and approachable.” The rest of the material palette adds to this: dark walnut timber, benches covered in soft brown leather. The flooring throughout is cement, but instead of the usual industrial-chic grey or black, here it’s a rich brown colour, bringing warmth.

The most striking element is the long, stainless-steel communal table that snakes its way through the dining space. “Kiez [pronounced Keetz] means neighbourhood in German – the idea is that this is a neighbourly focal point,” Che says. The table can also be dismantled and reconfigured, depending on what’s required. It can even be lifted up and out on to the pavement for alfresco summer dining. “I can’t wait to see that during Notting Hill carnival,” Che says.

Unsurprisingly, music was central to the design. The top of one of the high metal counters can be taken off to reveal a DJ booth, turning the restaurant into a listening bar. Meanwhile, the wall-mounted, burl-covered speakers were designed and built by Friendly Pressure, a London-based studio that has over the past couple of years become a go-to supplier of premium sound systems for restaurants and bars.

Red Deer has also been building its reputation, becoming known for original and creative restaurant interiors. The studio was founded by Che and his friends Lionel Real de Azúa and Ciarán O’Brien. The trio met while working at west London architecture practice Michaelis Boyd. “We were also living together,” says Che. “It was very incestuous. Platonically speaking.” They quickly realised they all wanted the same thing: independence. So, in 2012, they set up their own studio.

The name Red Deer came after a long search. “We spent months thinking of names but nothing sounded right,” Che says. “In the end, we got a bit drunk and just Googled what our respective countries have in common.” Che is half-English and half-Argentine, Real de Azúa is Uruguayan but was brought up in France and the US, and O’Brien is Irish. “The first thing that came up was that the red deer is native to all these countries, which we thought was really cool,” Che says. “We later found out that the red deer is native to about a third of the world,” he laughs. Nonetheless, the name stuck.

The studio was also behind the interiors of Ochre, the restaurant at the National Gallery, and Arcade, the upmarket food-hall concept that now has two sites in London: one in the Battersea Power Station development and one, just opened, in Covent Garden. Right now, Che and his cofounders are busy working on a couple of new Arcade projects and speaking with the Kiez Kebab owners about further potential sites in London. So watch this space: a combination of kebabs, champagne and techno might well be popping up soon in a Kiez near you.

kiezkebab.com