SOZO CUISINE, Chengdu
Japanese cuisine allow diners to taste the beauty of pure freshness. Ingredients presented in their most primitive form possess an implicit visual power, and reflect the chef’s masterful selection, as well as his supreme knife skills and cooking expertise. The fresh flavors of such cuisine on the tip of the diner’s tongue are the culmination of Japan’s centuries-long culinary romance with seafood.
Landscape
In the East, landscape provides the best metaphor for an aesthetic both pure and majestic. To establish a Japanese restaurant in China, connecting both cultures with a common language is of prime importance. Interestingly, these two cultures look at landscapes in different ways. A Japanese rock garden is strict, tidy, and replete with poetry and contemplation. Meanwhile, Chinese landscape painting often consists of splashes of heavy green and blue ink unbound by distinct lines. Although both cultures portray landscapes differently, the primary concern for each is artistic mood. We have integrated the two in molding a new manner of expression, designing a space which exhibits various hues within a single-color palette. By means of conspicuous, shapely stones and rock gardens, and transparent screens bearing traditional Chinese ink paintings, a richly layered spatial relationship is established.
Purity
Simplicity is hard to control, but it is the best way to convey a mood. The design of Sozo employs primitive, unpolished materials to portray traditional Japanese symbols. Traditional sliding doors constructed of galvanized iron and a floor made from black iron and simple wooden panels combine to portray unmistakable Japanese character. Unpainted birch plywood gives the room a golden hue while the polished concrete walls and ceiling all represent new interpretations of traditional features. All of this is suggestive of more than just a change in building techniques. The use of simple, primitive materials to design and create an exquisite space is a test of both technique and vision. The same is true of the untrammeled techniques of ink landscape painting which lead to a sense of purity - both contain the vitality and wisdom of the Earth and all its creatures.
