This Gem of a Restaurant Serves Up Modernist Design in an Ancient City
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Though Kyoto, with its plentiful temples, is often considered the seat of Japan’s prewar cultural heritage, the city has modernist bona fides, too. For evidence, look no further than architect Stephanie Goto’s elegant scheme for Jean-Georges at the Shinmonzen, the new restaurant in a boutique hotel in the city designed by Tadao Ando, with interiors by Rémi Tessier.
The restaurant is the latest Japanese outpost from chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and his first in Kyoto. When it came to creating the space, “the overarching vision was [to make it] a lens into the natural beauty of Kyoto and Japan,” Goto explains. But the ELLE DECOR A-List designer also worked to incorporate nods to the Irish heritage of the Shinmonzen’s owner, hotelier Paddy McKillen, who also brought discerning design-minded travelers its sister property in Provence, Villa La Coste; to that end, in the kitchen, Goto deployed green Connemara marble as a backsplash to vivid effect.
Local craft traditions, like the space’s shikkui plaster walls in deep crimson, and the raw beauty of natural materials, as in the bar made from a single slab of heavily veined Rosso Antico stone, also inspired Goto’s interiors. “We wanted to keep everything very simple,” but offer “whimsy and an unexpected quality” on a closer look, she says. Mission accomplished.
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