Restaurant Porn is a regular column of daydreams presented as a means to introduce Vancouver diners and designers to concepts, looks, and fully-formed ideas that they might draw an inkling of inspiration from. We do our best to pair the foreign rooms with local addresses so as to let everyone in on the fantasy.

(via) You probably – on many occasions – walked into a bar, restaurant or cafe and thought to yourself, “Wow, this place looks like it’s right out of a ______ movie.” It could be Tarantino, Leone, Kubrick or any other director with striking visual signatures, but you’d know it likely wasn’t the intention of the designer to flip that switch of recognition in your brain. That isn’t the case here, where they take that switch and hit you over the head with it.

WHAT IT IS: The Budapest Cafe. Designed by Melbourne-based studio, Biasol, it’s a coffee shop directly inspired by the movies of American director, Wes Anderson. You can see it in the repeated motifs (curved arches, long-stepped stairs) and sharp-lined symmetry; the colour palette of pastel pinks and greens; the quirky Eero Aarnio Bubble Chair and the fourth wall tickle of obvious set decoration, et cetera. It’s unmistakable, and that’s the point.

WHERE IT IS: #7, Second Section of the Second Ring Road, JianShe Lu, Chenghua District, Chengdu, China.

WHERE WE WISH IT WAS: The heart of Kerrisdale, say, the block of West 41st Ave. between Yew and Arbutus.

WHY WE WISH IT WAS THERE: It exudes that patent mix of oblivious ridiculousness and ill-gotten old money eccentricity characterized in such Anderson films as The Royal Tenenbaums and The Fantastic Mr. Fox (as personified by Boggis, Bunce and Bean).

All photos © James Morgan