U.K. Restaurant Borders on Perfection

Door Sign for Fazenda Rodizio Bar and Grill

We’d like to introduce you the best new restaurant in Liverpool: Fadenza Rodizio Bar and Grill. Portuguese for “farm”, Fadenza is a Brazilian Steakhouse featuring the famous churrasco (barbeque) of the Pampas region.  The grasslands that stretch from Southern Brazil through Patagonia are well known for their cattle production and gaúchos (cowboys). The gaúchos of the South American plains have developed a strong culture and cuisine, part of which includes rodizio dining. Rather than select your meal from the menu, you pay a flat rate for dinner. As the various meats come off the grill, they’re carried to the tables on a large skewer, where the servers slice cuts of beef, lamb, pork and other offerings through the meal.

This phenomenon is sweeping the United States as well as Britain. This is Fadenza’s second location, the first being in Leeds. Though they’ve only been open a few months, they already rank on Trip Advisor as #3 of almost 1,000 restaurants listed in Liverpool, maintaining a 5/5 rating after over 130 reviews. Numerous compliments were made about the warm and inviting decor that can perhaps be best described as “modern rustic”.

Fazenda entry, with cement tile. Trapani Midnight Field with Trellis Shell border.

This masterpiece of hospitality design was created by Carroll Design, of Manchester, England. The decor features beautiful rough-cut timber on vertical surfaces such as bars and reception desks, with perfectly proportioned cement tile “rugs” separating spaces and highlighting important areas such as salad and side bars. Furnished with leather and cowhide, and decorated with saddles and other items from the tack room, any gaúcho would feel right at home.

Used at Fadenza was “Trapani Midnight”, a Lundy P. Wilder original design, and Villa Lagoon Tile exclusive.  To edge the walls and transition to hardwood flooring, the designer used another Wilder original, the Shell Trellis” border and corners. While their use had waned, most historic cement tile installations used borders, often using elaborate layers of several complimenting border patterns. Many creative designers in the hospitality field have kept the tradition strong, using borders to separate various sections of different patterns or solid-color tiles. In this case the designer uses hardwood floors to direct traffic to beautiful effect.

Click on thumbnails for full-size images…

Trapani Midnight Floor with Trellis Shell Border along the bar of Fazenda, Liverpool.Trapani Midnight Floor with Trellis Shell Border along the bar of Fazenda, Liverpool.Trapani Midnight Floor with Trellis Shell Border along the bar of Fazenda, Liverpool.Trapani Midnight Floor with Trellis Shell Border along the bar of Fazenda, Liverpool.

With the growth in popularity of open floor plans in the home, we may see a resurgence of this technique. Even though homeowners want to remove the walls, they still desire visual cues to separate and transition between eating, dining, and living spaces. Flooring designs with cement tile borders such as used here provide the perfect solution.

Trapani Midnight Floor with Trellis Shell Border in a lounge area of Fazenda, Liverpool.Trapani Midnight Floor with Trellis Shell Border along the salad bar of Fazenda, Liverpool.Trapani Midnight Floor with Trellis Shell Border along the salad bar of Fazenda, Liverpool.Trapani Midnight: Trapani pattern cement tile in Midnight colorway. Primarily black, with beige and white accents.

You may be asking as I did, “Isn’t Trapani an Italian-inspired design?” Yes, it is. In my research, I spotted that Rio Grande Du Sol, Brazil’s southern-most state is also Brazil’s “wine country”, and was the epicenter of a large wave of Italian immigration to Brazil in the late 19th and early 20th century. Poor Italians, primarily from the Veneto, Trentino, and Lombardia regions immigrated to southern Brazil where they could settle and establish their own farms.

Also a good read is Fazenda’s blog. They share a number of recipes, including their recipe for Crème Caramel.

Fazenda's Creme Caramel

 

“Best of 2013” Design Award, a Cement Tile Win.

Interior Design magazine has chosen the “Best of the Year” for 2013, and we’d like to congratulate our client, Meyer Davis Studio for winning “Best of the Year 2013: Fine Dining“. Their project “Harlow” remodeled a historic space once the private entertainment venue of William Randolph Hurst. Perhaps as much a restoration as a renovation, the Harlow project brought the best of the 1930’s grandeur forward to the modern day.

The award-winning design features some of Villa Lagoon Tile’s most popular designs in several places.  “Lantern Trellis” and “Cubes” can be found in the elegant restrooms, as well as a larger version of Cubes in a conservatory dining annex, that gained a mention in Interior Design’s original project article, “Blond Ambition“.  This installation in particular shows cement tile’s versatility, using solid and two-color tile to provide a larger scale of Cubes design.

Salamanca cement tile in Ladies room of Harlow, NYC.
Lantern Trellis Cement Tile Installation
Cubes cement tile in Men's room of Harlow, NYC.
Cubes Cement Tile Installation
Large-Scale Cubes in Dining Area
Large-Scale Cubes in Dining Area

Large-Scale Cubes cement tile in Harlow, NYC.

While our ever-popular “Cubes” cement tile was used in the stately-men’s room, a different feel was desired for this dining area.  A larger patterned is achieved by the creative arrangement of the simplest tiles in our toolkit: solids, and the two-color diagonal. This layout also shows how easily a designer could use cement tile to create grand, custom chevron patterns.

A 9x6 layout of cement tile, resembling an enlarged Cubes pattern tile.
Large-Scale cubes using Monterey Collection “Diagonal” and single-color tiles.

The writers of Interior Design are not the only ones taking a notice to the renewed luster of this Midtown Manhattan jewel…  Harlow is quickly being recognized as a great experience, and has already been the venue for parties hosted by Madonna, Woody Allen, and others in the New York social scene.


Update April 27, 2016: Unfortunately Harlow has closed. Their original site can still be found in the Internet Archive.

The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long. –Laozi