Omar's Place

Omar Shabaan, the man behind the new, popular restaurant, is well-known and respected in the Egyptian hospitality scene and with Omar’s Place he now brings his business to London. Omar’s Place is located in a corner building with the restaurant and bar on the first floor and the kitchen and toilets below. It was very important to Shabaan that the interior of the new restaurant should have a southern ambience, so he asked Gayle Noonan and Tatjana von Stein of Sella Concept to take on the task of transforming a former pub in a Victorian white stucco building in London into a warm and inviting Mediterranean space.

Sella Concept used the sun as their main source of inspiration and created an interior – in which the majority of the designs are bespoke – full of round shapes and curved lines. The designers have used natural materials such as wood and weathering steel throughout, as well as a wide range of warm, earthy colours. 

The strong Mediterranean feel is combined with a look that is at once futuristic and a nod to the 1970s, and the result is both pleasing and fascinating.  The warm atmosphere begins with the plastered peach walls and the velour seating in a slightly darker hue, fixed on top of a brass base. Several areas such as the restaurant corridor and a circular feature at the centre of the room are clad floor to ceiling in sapele wood panels.

The warm colour scheme is contrasted by the pale grey wood panels of the bar front and the green terrazzo of the bar counter and the table tops. The recurring circle motif appears in doorways, alcoves, and mirrors – and in the backrest of the CH88 chair, which the designers chose for the dining area. The light, oiled oak backrest is attuned to the hue of the sapele wood as a beautiful contrast to the teal velvet seat covers.