Restaurants and bars call upon all of the senses, not just taste, to establish an emotional connection with customers. They rely on their architecture and decor to establish a visual identity that reflects ...
Found in Translation: Toronto’s Ame restaurant evokes a Tokyo vibe by using stone, wood and cloth drawn from not-so-distant sources.
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By Matthew Hall
How do you create an authentic-feeling Japanese restaurant in downtown Toronto without shipping massive amounts of furnishings and other materials the 6,000-plus miles between those two locales? That was one of the biggest challenges facing design firm Munge Leung in creating Ame. The restaurant is the latest brainchild of INK, the entertainment/hospitality empire run by Toronto nightlife impresario Charles Khabouth, in tandem with brothers/restaurateurs Guy and Michael Rubino.
The trio's new eatery formerly housed the Rubinos' Rain restaurant, which featured Asian-fusion cuisine. (The space's longer-term back story is even more interesting—decades ago, it housed Toronto's first women's prison.) So what better twist for a reincarnation of the space than “Ame,” which is the Japanese word for rain?
But that play on words didn't set the overall theme for the 6000-sq.-ft. restaurant. “There's only one water feature in the whole place,” notes Alessandro Munge, managing partner at Toronto-based Munge Leung, which partnered with graphic design firm Device222 in creating Ame.
Instead, the designers followed a brief for a space that would “reflect the Japanese culture's affinity for layering materials and attention to detail, without necessarily being ‘authentic/authentic,'” says Munge, who worked at Yabu Pushelberg's design studio before co-founding the firm bearing his surname in 1997 with fellow Yabu alum Sai Leung.
That meant designers didn't have to journey to Japan itself to outfit the space. Munge's purchasing trips for the project included visiting a kimono-maker's shop in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he obtained leftover strips of brightly colored cloth imported from Japan that adorn Ame's banquettes and bar chairs; taking a tractor ride on a farm in northern Ontario province, where he found the massive stone that became the restaurant's hostess stand; and venturing into a barn in Oxford, Pa., that was stacked high with long slabs of black walnut wood that wound up being used to create the restaurant's 35-ft.-long bar, as well as its table tops.
Finding many of the restaurant's materials from sources that were within the same time zone as Toronto—rather than half a world away—not only helped keep costs down, it also reduced the environmental toll associated with shipping goods internationally, Munge notes. In addition, he believes Ame's multilayered materials palette fulfilled another of the main objectives the Rubinos and Khabouth had for Ame, which was “to create a one-of-a-kind destination in Toronto that would be on a par with something found in New York or Las Vegas.”
Project Participants
CO-OWNERS Charles Khabouth, INK Entertainment; Michael Rubino,
Guy Rubino
DESIGN Munge Leung: Alessandro Munge, managing partner; Sai Leung, design director; Sayed Shakour, senior designer; Cy Lam and Jung Park, designers
SPECIALTY DESIGN CONSULTANT Device222 (graphics and communications)
GENERAL CONTRACTOR Bolt Design
DECORATIVE JAPANESE HARDWARE Hida Tool & Hardware Inc.
FURNITURE AND ACCESSORIES Green Tea Design; Roost; Elite Living;
European House; Klaus by Nienkamper
HEMLOCKS/RECLAIMED WOOD BEAMS Century Mill Lumber
LIGHTING Lighton Electric; Eurolite; TPL Lighting
NATURAL STONES Block + Stone Resource Group Inc.
PORCELAIN TILES Deco Tile
SIGNAGE/GRAPHICS Device222
TABLES/TABLETOPS/WALNUT WOOD PLANKS Hearne Hardwoods Inc.
VINTAGE JAPANESE KIMONO FABRICS Kimono Lily
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