Pigsty opens in Bristol’s Gloucester Road with interior design by Phoenix Wharf
Pigsty, a new neighbourhood restaurant and bar on Bristol’s Gloucester Road, has opened for business, with all interior design and graphics on the scheme created by Bristol-based hospitality and retail specialists Phoenix Wharf.
The 100-cover space, aimed at families, couples and group diners, offers high-quality dishes based around good quality, local produce and the company’s own pork products from The Jolly Hog – all prepared with taste, flair and heart and served in a fun, stylish and contemporary environment.
The interior concept mixes town-and-country via old and new industrial elements, butcher’s shop tiling (some dating from around 1920, from an original pork butcher on the site), plus warm green herringbone timber and playful pink-grouted green ceramic tiling and graphic slogans.
The design brief for the first permanent Pigsty site was to evolve the look and feel first expressed in the company’s first Wapping Wharf shipping container outlet, but to raise the bar by creating a more grown-up, premium feel and catering for customers who want to sit and linger. The design also reflected the location, as Gloucester Road is an up-and-coming area of Bristol.
When the site turned out to have housed a pork butcher (James Brown Butchers, 1890-1950), a further strand of inspiration was added, with trace elements of that shop and era going on to become an organic part of the new concept, including original tiling and areas of exposed concrete flooring, complete with historic marks and scuffs.
Pigsty has a large, glazed shop-front with five tall fold-back windows, set with a green herringbone timber surround. Inside, the layout includes an open kitchen to the rear, underlining a feeling of transparency and adding theatre, with the surround to the kitchen pass clad in a green ceramic tile with striking pink grouting.
To the right of the space is the bar area, where people can drink and also grab a quick burger, whilst the main restaurant houses various seating zones to cater for all-comers, including two rows of booths and smaller freestanding tables down the centre and in the window area, which seat two of three people and can be combined as needed.
The rear seating area by the kitchen features taller, group-dining tables, as well as bar-height stool seating and further free-standing tables.
The new bar-front is in a green herringbone-pattered timber, whilst pink is used once again for the bar top, which is in a pink-flecked, textured Corian and is LED-lit below the bar top overhang. A copper finish has been used behind the bar taps on the central section of bar-back wall cladding, whilst a black iron gantry over the bar counter is another nod to an industrial look and feel.
The ceiling features an industrial, exposed look, with steel tracks and copper pipes, whilst lighting includes old-style metal lights, as well as more contemporary exposed-bulb pendants and a couple of height-adjustable pig lamps with curly coils; a genuine farm out-take, where they are used to keep baby piglets warm.
Olly Kohn of Pigsty commented on the final design: ‘Phoenix Wharf were great to work with. They took time to understand our business and values before helping us evolve the look and feel of the brand via smart thinking, operational insights and a striking visual and materials palette. They helped us achieve a premium feel for the new venue that is still true to the original brand vision and will help us move forward with confidence towards the next stage of our growth.’
Photo Credit: Franklin & Franklin
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