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InterContinental Hotel Asiana Saigon Yu Chu
InterContinental Hotel Asiana Saigon Yu Chu
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
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InterContinental Hotel Asiana Saigon Yu Chu
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Type
YEAR
2010
Our objective for this Chinese restaurant was to create a dining experience that was authentically Vietnamese-Chinese, yet brings forth the freshness, vitality and versatility of a young and fast-growing nation that has only recently in the past two decades begun to emerge on the world stage. A neo-Vietnamese French Art Deco style is expressed through representations of archetypal elements of Vietnamese urban space. These elements are the narrow street alley, Dao temples and Chinese eateries, along with locally sourced screens, furniture and artifacts found in those contexts, and manufactured and finished in traditional methods.There are four main spaces in the restaurant which when experienced sequentially recreate a journey through the charms of old Saigon and its gastronomically rich culture. These spaces are the Entrance Foyer, the Alley Dining, the Main Dining Hall and the Private Dining Rooms.The guest’s entry sequence begins at the entrance foyer. This space evokes the back alley of a street where an intimate Dao temple square with incense coil lanterns looming above calls up notions of prayer. A traditionally woven Vietnamese-Chinese silk screen panel featuring the Chinese peony partially veils the dining areas. Beyond lies an alleyway representing a food street against the backdrop of a long wall composed of hand-carved cake moulds, sourced appropriately from a local street vendor. Clay brick floors paving the entrance foyer and the public walkway of the alley add to the sense of being in the back streets of old Saigon. After this portion of the journey, the guest enters an Art Deco-inspired Main Dining Hall and the Private Dining rooms at the end which open up to expand the restaurant space as necessary.The Dining Hall has a polished sheen compared to the rusticity of the alleyway. The public walkway flooring changes from brick to limestone. Ubiquitous ceiling and window-side standing lattice screens harmonise with the lamps and chairs.French and Vietnamese-Chinese aesthetics are interwoven and expressed through furnishing and lacquer ware produced with traditional furniture manufacturing methods. The French provincial chairs finished in Vietnamese lacquer straddle the different cultural influences that make up today’s Vietnam. Art Deco-inspired Chinese consoles and chairs with an Antique European Finish and stripped of elaborate carvings capture the essence of traditional elements in a contemporary way.The design and materials used to create each of the three main food stations in the Dining Hall reflect the different cooking methods and food types prepared within them. The food stations’ distinct cooking methods in turn collectively represent the four classical elements of Air, Water, Fire and Earth crucial to each method of food preparation. The three cooking methods are steaming, wok-frying and roasting.The Dim Sum station embodies steaming (which employs the two elements of Air and Water) as its culinary method. Inspired by Dim Sum bamboo steamer baskets, its form is involved envisaging steamer baskets piled high within the station with bamboo wrapped all around. The metal structure of the kitchen station is exposed to represent the metal hooks used to fasten the bamboo steamer baskets in place. Slits in the bamboo ‘wrap-around’ at different eye levels allow guests to observe the activity in the kitchen station.The Wok Station embodies wok-frying, which employs the element of Fire; its design is inspired by metal woks on a high flame. Rustic Chinese-patterned cast iron lattice screens layer on the wok-frying activity. Surrounding shelves display traditional Vietnamese Chinese artifacts and the actual pots, woks and pans used in food preparation to recall how local alleyway food stalls expose their cooking utensils. This is in line with the raw, rustic design of the food station.The Roast Station embodies roasting, which employs the Earth element; the stacked columns of clay bricks around the kitchen station signify the roasting oven.Hotel guests can access the restaurant directly from their room floors through a discrete set of elevators. This leads them into a passage connected to the entrance foyer, and which VIPs share to separately access the private dining rooms without having to go through the Main Dining Hall. Clay roof tiles are stacked and cemented to form a backdrop to this corridor wall. Its coarse, rough texture enhances the alleyway ambiance and serves as a foil to the artworks displayed in the niches dug out of the wall.Images are courtesy of InterContinental Asiana Saigon.
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