Sushi Ninja

Restaurant manager Sophie Kurota and her sushi-chef husband Ken approached Studio Gascoigne to help them realise an opportunity. They were offered an open space in the Centre City shopping complex in New Plymouth, just down the road from their existing Japanese restaurant. The site was originally just an open circulation mezzanine above the food court and so the rent was reasonable.

There were a number of issues however: first there were no services in the space so all plumbing, ventilation, power and a kitchen extract needed to be added plus a whole prep kitchen. Secondly the site was hardly visible from the food court below with only the ceiling being visible from downstairs. Finally Sophie and Ken had a very limited budget. What they did have, however, was plenty of energy and enthusiasm to create something quite different to their existing restaurant and to take a big punt on it.

They proposed a sushi train restaurant to draw customers up from the food court and develop a new, younger, market not competing with their original restaurant.

With the limited budget, Studio Gascoigne needed to create a very an eye-catching fit-out with only enough money for the most functional fit-out with some (flat) signage. The solution for both was to use a strong ‘anime’ cartoon character along with a strong magenta colour to make the fit-out immediately visible and disguise its simple lines. The magenta colour was also chosen as a reference to ‘The Rising Sun’ and for being easy to match in print media and vinyl signage for brand consistency throughout. In many ways, the whole fit-out doubles as its own sign. Resene created a custom colour match to Process Magenta C that was used throughout.

Another challenge was to meet the Mall’s requirements for a textured back wall. The recommended concrete or stone, far exceeded the available budget. Instead the textured back wall was achieved with plasterboard finished with Resene Plastercote textured finish in Resene Friar Grey dressed up with rope screen decoration. The kitchen rangehood had to hang down from the ceiling, so seizing this as an opportunity, it was made into a bright pink feature too!

Building contractor: Custom Construction NZ Ltd
Client: Sophie Kurota
Interior designer: Mark Gascoigne, Jo Clayton, Victor Chen and Francois Lourme, Studio Gascoigne
Project: Resene Total Colour Awards 2017