Dishoom, London’s award-winning restaurateurs, base their food culture on the original Bombay 1920’s Irani Cafe style. They engaged our Creative Director and team to recreate the colourful experience of Mumbai’s famous Chowpatty Beach on London’s South Bank. We proposed establishing a pop-up beach bar to take the brand “on holiday”.
We immersed ourselves in the Dishoom brand. Our successful event design and event production pitch adopted a “jugaad” creative approach – based on the Hindi/Urdu colloquial term meaning to fix or work around a problem using innovation and simplicity.
“The whole idea of the pop-up was that if you were to take one of these original cafes and walk it down to Bombay’s famous beach in 1965, on a mild acid trip, what would be the result?”
Using the “jugaad” ethos, the creative team based the set design on up-cycled materials and furnishing. Brilliantly coloured oil barrels and reclaimed railway sleepers as seating set the scene for an unforgettable environment. 48 tons of sand were imported! We built a bar out of recycled plastic bottles, piled up street junk, and constructed a wall from tightly rolled newspapers.
We even re-invented a fishing boat for selling coconuts. These were just a sample of the quirky inventive treatment that made this creative event experience totally unique, winning a nomination for The Restaurant Bar Design Awards.
From start to finish, we were solely responsible for the realisation of our designs. Our own workshop saw construction of the set and props, installation of heating, cooling, refrigeration and kitchen facilities. We also provided client experience basics such as tills and PDQ machines.
