:: Mattoni Grand Drink ...A PLANET OF CONTEMPORARY COCKTAILS ::

Summary

- Success? It all starts with design
- Beyond the cooking glass
- Bathrooms: functionality meets fun
- The light fantastic
- Perfect lighting? This is how you do it!
- Modular design: a winning formula for locales
- Aesthetics and comfort sit together
- Today's trends

A welcoming atmosphere, low tables, lighting - coy and diffused - and all neatly finished. This is what goes to make Noy in Milan so special. But Noy is just one of many locales that have realised the importance of lighting and design. At the American Bar in the Cosmo Hotel Palace in Cinesello Balsamo (Milan), for example, purity of form and line, combined with simple and natural materials and neutral tones, along with large arched glass divisions and design pieces and furniture from the 1930, makes for an enticing mix. And still in Milan, Rouge (as befits the name) has opted for sensual and provocative red throughout.
It seems that where once upon a time finding an architect that could turn a rather dated restaurant into a chic locale was an arduous task indeed. Now finding a designer who will do a bad job seems just as improbable. One of the reasons for this is the sheer range of options available, the other is that nowadays good design is almost as important as good food - at least when it comes to getting people's attention.
"When sight and taste are married in perfect harmony, food will find its perfect presentation" says Alfonso Montecucco, the brains behind Food Contex, a company that specialises in bringing this kind of concept to fruition. But it's not all aesthetics either. Functionality too has a large part to play.
At the latest edition of Atmosfair held in Rimini, the Politecnico of Milan exhibited various ideas from students at the university. One of these was a concept for a restaurant cum car park where customers wouldn't have to worry about where they parked their car, bringing a whole new meaning to a 'drive in' restaurant. According to the relevant authorities in Milan, over 850 locales have had a makeover in the last year. That's almost 10% of all public establishments. Interestingly, although style is certainly very important, no one style is dominating the circuit as the latest trend is towards choosing the mood you want to create as opposed to replicating the mood someone else has created.

Beyond the cooking glass
Behind large panes of glass, the kitchen becomes the spectacular stage of the chefs. Because nowadays showing the kitchen to client is (almost) indispensable.
Once upon a time the kitchen was one of those places strictly off limits to the uninitiated. Now, in the trendiest locales everywhere, knife, spoon, pot and pan, are beginning to take pride of place. Just think of the recently opened Cosmo Hotel Palace, an all white and ultra refined hotel (designed by architect Paola Giambelli) in Cinisello Balsamo (Milan). The hotel features a transparent 16 metre wall so that customers can not only see what they are eating, but what they are about to eat too.
The LifeGate in Milan, a restaurant that specialises in food from socially conscious sources. It too has offered to go for transparency on all levels, sporting a spanking new kitchen visible even from the road.
Meanwhile the Krug Room in Dorchester Hotel in London plays with the theme of 'now you see it, now you don't" with a kitchen that is systematically unveiled by means of a special screen viewed via a private dining area with seating room for twelve. Everywhere, in Italy and abroad, the paying public has the right and wants to see the preparation of what they are about to eat.

Bathrooms: functionality meets fun
Far from being the purely functional places of old the latest bathrooms really are worth taking a peak.
The trend to show it all off has come to what is for many the biggest taboo of all, and anyone who wishes to make advances in their design and presentation would do well to start by taking a look at the one room that all too often gets overlooked - the bathroom.
In the Philippe Starck designed Bar89 in New York, the principle attraction isn't the food, it's the bathroom on the second floor, the insides of which are fully visible to all and sundry until a special screen is activated and the view studiously blocked until the bathroom is vacated.
At the latest edition of the Technobar & Food in Padova, the international showcase for the world of tourism and hospitality, the changes in attitudes towards the bathroom were reflected in new ideas where bathrooms included divans and tables and became veritable chill out rooms in their own right.
And in Milanese fashion hotspot, Hollywood, female patrons can enjoy a kind of Candid Camera as a two way mirror allows lots of giggling gals see their men folk preen themselves in the male toilets. Hotels too are sitting up and beginning to pay more and more attention to the bathroom.
At the refined Hotel Straf in Milan, for example, each of the bathrooms in all sixty-four rooms was made using different materials and no too rooms are alike.

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