When I called David Collins’ office to propose an interview with London’s most successful restaurant designer I was pretty confident of a good lunch. After all, Collins’ architectural firm has been responsible for the interiors of J. Sheekey, The Mirabelle, the bars and restaurants at The Berkeley and Claridge’s hotels, Locanda Locatelli and The Wolseley, among others.
But it was not to be. “David doesn’t do lunch,” I was informed by his efficient, protective PA, “but he would be happy to meet you for tea.” And so at 5pm I found myself being ushered to a corner table in The Berkeley’s Caramel Bar by a pert Polish waitress which had, she explained, been reserved for ‘Mr David’.
Collins is tall and distinguished, somewhere in his mid-forties – his precise age was the only fact he was not prepared to divulge – and bursting with native Irish charm and a willingness to chat about a business that has preoccupied him since he arrived here from Dublin 20 years ago.
Over the next 90 minutes he peppered his architectural points with references to the Bible, his wealthy private clients, Picasso and his dictum “to copy anybody but yourself”, a reference to the way in which he saw E.A.T, Eli Zabar’s New York café and takeaway and transformed it into EAT (Excellence and Taste) for the now very successful British sandwich chain which he has also designed. He also mentioned en passant a short story by Saki in which a loathed figure at a country house party turns out to be an actress hired specifically to draw everyone’s ire. “There is always someone like that on every major construction site I have been involved in,” Collins told me.
But what I was after were the professional secrets, the key factors which make a restaurant work for both the operator and the customer and allow certain spaces to thrive and prosper often for decades.
Collins began rather negatively. “There are certain spaces which just don’t work. It’s not a question of feng shui but rather that their internal spaces are just uncomfortable. I have walked away from certain jobs because I know they are beyond me. We have pitched for design jobs and come away very relieved that we haven’t won them.”
“But, “he added, “there are certain crucial factors. The most important probably is that the room must have the right flow to it. The Wolseley has this although it was originally built as a car showroom and was then converted into a bank. But from the entrance the customer can see the entire room while all the food comes from the left hand side with the dispense bar on the right so there are not too many intersections. And it is also very important that there is the correct sense of proportion between the height and width of the rooms otherwise the customer will always feel uncomfortable.
“If these conditions apply then my job becomes really exciting because I start to work with individuals who want to imbue a restaurant with character, a distinctive point of view. Then I begin to see my role as less that of a designer and more that of collaborator. With J. Sheekey I had no idea what I was going to do until Chris Corbin and Jeremy King started showing me the art they had begun to buy for the walls and the photos they were going to hang there. Then I understood what the interior should be. The same was true when I worked with the chef Giorgio Locatelli because he has such a clear understanding of who his customers are and what they want.”
The final criteria relate to space, both external and internal. “Any successful restaurant must have the right dialogue with the street they are on. This seems to me to be far more obvious in New York and Paris where the feel of a restaurant seems to vary far more with the different districts they are in than seems to be the case in London. And if this fits then the architect and the restaurateur can create the right understanding that makes the customer happy. At The Mirabelle, for example, the challenge was to manage people’s expectations because although this was a smart place on a smart Mayfair street, the restaurant is in a basement.”
All these successes on a design front have left Collins convinced of two other aspects of the restaurant business. The first is that whatever his input, successful, comfortable restaurants require constant maintenance that borders on tender, loving care. “Some restaurateurs and chefs care, others simply don’t. But Marcus Wareing at Petrus is a striking example of a chef who cares – he looks after his restaurant the way someone would look after their old Bentley.”
And the second is that whatever his and others’ success, ultimately converting an old building or a former restaurant into a new restaurant space will never be completely successful. “The ducting, the drainage or the air conditioning are probably all going to have to be compromised while the kitchen may not be in the right place for the food we want to eat today. I would love to do in London what I have seen work so successfully in Sao Paolo in Brazil and to build something brand new specifically to house a restaurant.”
Until then restaurant-goers will have to enjoy Collins’ current work and wait for his next interior, the second and, from what I have seen, large and hugely imposing branch of Nobu, which opens in the former Mayfair Club in Berkeley Street in June.
