Sult
- Gothenburg, Sweden
- Rune Bakke
- Hospitality
- 2025
The chef's brief had one line in it: the guests should be able to smell the work. Everything else in the project follows from taking that literally.
The kitchen sits in the middle of the floor as an island of blackened steel and firebrick, with the hearth open on three sides. Seating wraps it at two heights — a low counter at the fire itself for eight, and a ring of tables set back far enough that the heat arrives as atmosphere rather than discomfort. There is no pass, no service door and no wall between the two halves of the room.
Because the fire is uncontained, every surface had to be chosen for how it ages under smoke. The floor is fired clay tile laid without grout lines wide enough to hold grease. The walls are plastered in a dark clay render mixed on site with ash from the first month of service, so the room is literally coloured by its own use. The tables are single slabs of ash, oiled and expected to darken. Nothing here is protected; everything here is repairable.
Lighting is almost entirely indirect. The fire does most of the work, supplemented by low pendants over the tables and a wash across the ceiling that comes up rather than down. At full service the brightest thing in the room is the hearth, which was the point.
The one soft element is acoustic: a run of undyed wool felt on the long wall, quilted in wide panels, that takes the hardness out of a room built almost entirely from fired materials. It is the only surface in Sult that will not be improved by the next ten years.