Middle Eastern-inspired restaurant Carmel Fitzrovia revealed

This article first appeared in Mix Interiors #233

Words: Harry McKinley

On a rainy summer’s day, the pavements sodden and skies grey, London would seem to have little in common with Tel Aviv, sometimes coined the Miami of the Middle East. More than a mere difference of climate, they are cities set radically apart in design and character – Tel Aviv most lauded for its gleaming Bauhaus architecture, all crisp lines and bright white or artfully crumbling and blanketed in foliage.

“In places it feels raw and a bit rickety,” says Mata Architects founding director, Dan Marks, of the city that inspired Carmel Fitzrovia – the studio’s latest hospitality project. It’s the second location for the seedling Carmel brand, which deals in the ‘flavours of the eastern Mediterranean’. Mata similarly led on the design of the Queen’s Park original, a compact  all-day neighbourhood eatery, in what was once a minicab office – a 19^th century industrial warehouse, with exposed brick walls and timeworn wooden floorboards. Building on good bones, here the design was less integrated, albeit still nodding to Tel Aviv with the addition of hanging plants, in the tiling and in the restrained use of colour.