Piccalilli Restaurant is a meta-magical sortie into a culinary imagination conceived by both the chef and Preen, Inc.

Located in Culver City, Los Angeles, the restaurant’s design reflects its playful Cali-Asian menu that brings together the American southeastern seaboard and low Asian seas. Both a playground of bar brow and fine dining, Piccalilli’s fresh pop apocalypse aesthetic–envisioned by design studio Preen Inc – is both mythical and fantastical, conceived as a waypoint, a coordinate in the future, where two lovers hope to meet when all has failed. Gazing at patrons from above, mythical creatures were introduced by Preen to add to the fantasy of the space.

The designer hand created, in their office kitchen, the panther and les animaux featured on the purple heart shelf. They are both predator and prey, in magical harmony. Meanwhile inside the space, lighting is cleverly harnessed to up-level energy and accelerate color, both in the interior and presentation of the cuisine. The restaurant is both an explosion of color with a dark shadow. Specially manufactured architectural black light lighting not only oozes out from the bar, it is used in conjunction with 3500K white light over dining tables, which the colors of the food to life. The restaurant is thick with nostalgia for the pure time before. For passerbys gazing in, Piccalilli is an electrified beacon to the neighborhood adorned with neon signage. The color glows and spills out the garage doors to the street. Moth wall art moves as patrons walk by, an artist’s render commissioned by the design team. Meanwhile adorning the floor is a moth designed by the Preen team, telling the story of the magic that moves around and in us.

Design: Preen, Inc. Contractor: Barling Construction Photography: Tanveer Badal

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