Ode, located in Hiroo, Shibuya-ku, is a French restaurant advocating gastronomy.
The managing chef has put his thoughts in the name of the restaurant, Ode, which means a lyric poem, because he gathers the threads of Japanese tradition and aesthetics in his French cuisine as a story (poem).
Stepping into the restaurant through the entrance door finished in mortar like the adjacent walls, guests witness the world of his Ode. First, you will see the service counter and the wall cabinet storing glasses waiting to serve you. Linear lights arranged on each shelf of the wall cabinet are reflected on wine glasses, creating an enchanted world. In the restaurant, integrated with a grayish tone of tiles and mortar, wood and other materials, there is an open counter with 13 seats, a semi-open room for six guests overlooking the open kitchen and a dining room for four guests.
In order to adjust the eye level of guests sitting at the open counter, and that of our staff standing in the open kitchen, we raised the floor height on the open counter side by 300 mm from the floor line of the building.To do so required a bit of ingenuity. Like other standard buildings for rent, the floor-to-floor height of the building is low, so we would have been able to obtain only about a 2,200 mm high ceiling if the floor had been raised and a flat ceiling had been provided under the beams. At the same time, existing steel frames covered with fire resistant covering materials were an eyesore, so they had to be covered with a ceiling material. Therefore, we provided floating ceilings of various color tones and angles so the ceiling height under the beams would become the lowest. As a result, we succeeded in concealing the beams and providing a space with the necessary ceiling height for guests in the restaurant.
The space, like that under the eaves, expresses beauty unique to traditional Japanese architecture, combines different elements as one story (poem) and embodies the world of Ode.