A passionate designer of restaurants, Sabbir Amin tells Sumaiya Iqbal how his experience in course of working at a restaurant abroad has helped him muster skills at designing the different types of layout of restaurants in Dhaka of the likes of Thai Emerald and Fools’ Diner
SOURAV LASKAR
The art of meticulous attention put into the details while designing a restaurant is one that makes it different from all the others, has its unique appeal and impression among visitors. The design of a restaurant is broad and comprehensive, which comes a package to the visitor less oriented to the efforts put into it but it begins from the build-up of a kitchen, to the interiors, aesthetics, ambience, culture, gesture and timeliness among few to speak.
At 30, Sabbir Amin is one of the successful restaurateurs in the country, who pursued his creative excellence over his academic disciplines in mathematics.
Asked today, on his completion of designing four restaurants, Sabbir says, ‘I transform a space into a place focusing on how the ambience I am able to create develops a person’s mood and overall enhances the time spent at a restaurant,’ Sabbir mentions.
Sabbir completed his undergrad on Mathematics at La Roche College in Pittsburgh. To make ends meet as a student, he worked as a dishwasher for a small restaurant on campus. During his dishwashing days there, Sabbir observed the organisation and management of the kitchen inside, learning of the systems used to maintain proper function of the heart of any restaurant, which is the kitchen.
His career as a restaurateur began at the end of 2012 with the opening of Thai Emerald in Uttara, one of the four places owned by Sabbir and his family. He started with the design of the kitchen, helping it function with the formulation of efficient systems which helped meet the continuous orders pouring in from the customers in due time. It is a design perfected every day as new obstacles come by on a daily basis. And it was these very obstacles-sometimes seen during full house-that taught Sabbir the very ins and outs of the kitchen and the problems that may arise at anytime.
His time as a permanent employee of Thai Emerald also helped him gain expertise on food consultancy in the context of the restaurant industry. A year later Sabbir took on his next project of designing Fools’ Diner, owned by his family and a partner. The task though was much larger as the concept, theme and character of the place had to be built from scratch along with the structural design.
While the concept was of a cozy diner where people could be themselves, the theme was that inspired by a free thinker, a liberal mind; somewhere you could do exactly what your heart wanted – like a fool! What resulted was the personification of the diner itself into a warm, amiable character with a love for life and all its goodness. Fools’ Diner is one of the first restaurants to also introduce Japanese cuisine with sea food at very reasonable prices.
‘Designing a place does not only concern what it looks like but everything that is felt once someone walks through the door of a restaurant. It is what you see when you walk in, how you order the food, the response you receive, the wait for the food and everything that is a part of your time at a restaurant. Human centered design is what I strive to gain expertise in,’ says the designer as he stresses on how he wants people not only to think about what they have seen but what they felt.
Sabbir’s skills were put to the test again in 2015 when Thai Emerald’s second branch was opened in Gulshan. With his experience in the kitchen, knowledge in the field of food consultancy and overall as a restaurateur, he was able to take into consideration the many fine details of the skeleton of the design. He devised the design of the kitchen along with its stoves, the entire exhaust system; while also sketching out the process to be followed by the waiters in bringing in the orders, placing them at the counter and taking the food away in the most time efficient and hassle free way.
The significance of the design has a reflection in the quality of service and overall impression of a place. ‘The interior of the kitchen directly affects the exterior and an example could be how the number of air conditioners needed in the main area of the restaurant depends on the exhaust system. Again, the structure of the kitchen will impact the time taken for food to be made and thus served. Further, a slight mistake in the positioning of the dish washing unit may leave the kitchen floors muddy and as waiters enter and exit, they may take the mud with them outside! It’s all interconnected and what makes it all easier is experience,’ he says smiling as he mentions how difficult it can be on a busy weekend eve if one slight fault of design is not identified beforehand.
The project he has at hand is a restaurant that is soon to open at Gulshan named ‘Kiyoshi’ meaning purity in Japanese. The design is one inspired by the elements of wood, stone, water and nature itself.
Besides his focus on restaurants, Sabbir also works as experience designer for the non-government organisation, Spreeha, an initiative that empowers the underprivileged by engaging actively with their communities.
Designing gets better with knowledge, says the restaurant designer, who is also an occasional painter. Sabbir hopes to further explore the world of ‘design thinking’ and learn more about human centered design in particular. He also plans to develop systems, products and services that can be accessed by the public directly.