EL MATO RESTAURANT

Barcelona, 2017

Project: El Mató Restaurant.

Client: Jordi Vilà. 

Location: Pedralbes, Barcelona, Spain. 

Author: External Reference; Carmelo Zappulla & Chu Uroz. 

Team: Javier Alascio, Francesco Sacconi, Sebastian Amorelli. 

El Mató Restaurant embodies the reinvention of classical style with a new interpretation. As a historically protected landmark, the building itself is an emblem of the surrounding community, creating a dialogue with the nearby Monastery of Pedrables. While the exterior of the building is historically protected, the proposed restaurant interiors reference histories of gothic murals, detailed flooring, and brilliant stained glass windows with a modern perspective, to captivate a cultured clientele.
The interior details are also driven by Catalan cuisine, mainly miel i mató, a soft-textured dessert of whey cheese drizzled with honey. While the interior walls characterize the textural consistency of mató, the gleaming colors and viscous flow of honey are reproduced in resin partitions and ceiling sculptures. The interior flooring is derived from radial and colored mosaic patterns of sampietrini, a historical Roman street pavement.