Kricket is the brain­child of chef Will Bowlby and front of house Rik Campbell, spe­cial­is­ing in modern Indian small plates. Their tiny and much talked about first eatery, was squeezed into a shipping container within ‘Brixton Pop’. Kricket Soho is their brand new restau­rant on Denman Street. We were delighted to be appointed to design Kricket Brixton’s Big Brother, beating off stiff com­pe­ti­tion from major Central London F&B fit out firms.

The Soho site has space for 70 diners and is laid out across two floors. An open kitchen and counter dining reserved for walk-ins dominates as you enter. The bar top is crackle-glazed lava stone and Kricket’s signature Buffalo illus­tra­tion has been hand painted onto the wall.

The restau­rant launched just before Christmas and was imme­di­ate­ly mobbed by walk-in queues of up to 3 hours. Pre-marketing had secured thousands of sign-ups and even Kricket’s investor couldn’t get a table on his first trip. For diners upstairs, a run of cozy rattan booths offer something for visitors not wanting to sit at the bar.

We wanted to steer clear of cliche’d props used for purely dec­o­ra­tive purposes, and made sure our vintage finds also served a practical purpose. From antique pro­pel­lors turned into candle sticks to Indian cowbells used to signpost last orders.

Westminster Planning dis­al­lowed our beautiful antique Indian front door, as the actual front door. But we added a shot of Kricket character to the exterior, painting it in an inky blue black, embell­ished with a hand painted logo and custom designed bronze 90 degree sign. Bespoke designed fretwork panels based on the logo in the window add a touch of subtle branding and dis­cre­tion for at-bar-diners.

Behind these glossy photos lies a complex dossier of technical design drawings, guiding the Client and con­trac­tors into how we expected our design concept to be brought to life. Our design for Kricket included every­thing from con­cept­ing to CAD Space Planning, preparing sub­mis­sions for Planning, 3D rendering, graphic design, original art creation, full Technical Design, Sourcing, Specifications, Procurement, Tender, Handover and on site inspec­tions.

Our photo-real CGI visu­al­i­sa­tions of our design concept are remark­ably similar to the end result, which the Clients loved. We think photo-real renders are so important. They give the whole team, including the Contractors, a clear vision of the pro­duc­tion values we and the Clients are seeking to achieve. 2D CAD drawings and spec­i­fi­ca­tion alone simply can’t com­mu­ni­cate that.