The third Kricket restaurant we designed was based within the iconic Television Centre in White City.

We have a long history with the brand having worked on Kricket’s creative identity, website, and designing the interior of its first two London restaurants in Soho and Brixton. Our graphics team also designed the Kricket cookbook which coincided with the launch of the Brixton venue.

We waxed lyrical with our seating designs in the new space, crafting a scallop-edge vintage-Indian-inspired bench to snake around the perimeter of the space. Which we upholstered with a soft mohair red-orange back cushion and aged tan leather seat pad. The banquette is flanked by three XL vintage convex mirrors rich in patina and ageing.

All the seating within the restaurant has been designed to offer a comfortable place to kick back and enjoy punchy, Indian-inspired cocktails and sharing plates. Table-tops come in a mix of brown Emperador Marble top, white carrara and green Verde Rajistan Marble with brass trim. Furniture and woodgrains range from burnt tobacco to dark walnut. Dining chairs are upholstered in deep, forest green and cognac leathers, some feature woven cane for a shot of colonial styling.

For the look and feel of the new space, we have used an atmospheric, textured palette, ranging from urban nudes and cracked terracottas through smoke-gold-veined marbles, burnt chocolate joinery and black marbled cork walls and lightly distressed micro-cement floor. The antique brass metallics of Soho have been replaced with rich and dark oil rubbed bronze, raw iron and refined gunmetal steel metalwork and bespoke lighting. The overall scheme is fresh and earthy by day, designed to turn barfly-moody later on, for late night drinks and food.

The venue’s eat-at-kitchen counter has a polished plaster finish, topped with creme pardais marble and leather-clad bar stools, alongside a run of rattanwork two-seater booths.

Kricket Soho’s Lavastone (“Pyrolave”) crackle-glazed bar-top has been replicated in Television Centre, but this time in a pastel mint-green hue on the horseshoe shaped cocktail bar near reception. The colour plays against the dark chocolate timber fascia below, creating an ice cream cool enticing mint-choc juxtaposition. The cocktail bar stools are also reminiscent of Soho with the Kricket ‘K’ engraved into the metal backrest. But rather than antique brass and dusky pink, as found at Soho, the stools are finished in burnt bronze and cognac leather. The walls surrounding the horseshoe bar feature a specialist hand-finished aged plaster effect, with burnished rose gold leaf accents.

Ceilings are painted dusky blush with hand-fired terracotta tiles wrapped around the space’s concrete columns. The overall decorative palette creates the perfect backdrop for pops of Kricket’s brand orange-red, which zings out from behind closed doors. The new West London restaurant features a signature communal sharing table, lovingly-crafted from an extra-large 3.5m long slab of live-edge wood with a collection of hand-turned wooden lights framing it below. Due to the size of the space, some of the walls have been treated in acoustic materials, including a black-ink marbled cork.

The bathrooms steal a few signatures from Soho, including pipework taps and ironwork mirrors, but on a grander scale with a 3‑metre wide asymmetric antique mirror and blackened steel trough sink. Harder finishes are softened by a rich ochre palette and monochromatic honed marble tiling.

Run For The Hill’s team of sign-writers have hand-painted custom graphics and lettering throughout the venue to guide customers around the space.

The TVC site, nestled between neighbours Bluebird and Soho House Group’s latest outpost, White City House, offers Kricket their first outside terrace. Run For The Hills has styled the terrace with vintage Indian wait stations, antique bench seating, iron and terrazzo tables, bronze wirework seating and clashing patterned cushions.

Rusty corten steel planters, which will flower with fragrant jasmine, surround the perimeter.

Testimonials

“This is our third project working with Run For The Hills and they have given it the same level of passion as their first. It’s also our biggest site yet, so has been more complex and challenging but we have pulled it off together and still managed to really enjoy the process. They just get us and our ambitions and when you add that to the creativity of their design ideas, and their eagle-eye for a good finish, it makes them a really great design partner.”

Rik Campbell.
Front of House, Kricket.

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