Kitchen design is essential for serving a purpose

Lately, local restaurants began implementing a modern look, to stay on top of industry trends. HORECA decoration projects usually disregard the idea of a concept imagined as a reflection of their personality. With regard to this, MAIZE restaurant is a fine example of coordinating look and "menu". Promoting a fresh concept of restaurants in Bucharest, based exclusively on carefully selected natural ingredients, MAIZE has a beautiful interior design, which underlines natural stone. We had a discussion with Mircea Varlam, one of the founders, about the origin of this project and its fundamentals.

PIATRAONLINE: You came up with a new concept of restaurant, focused also on interior design, besides fine dining. How would you briefly define the MAIZE approach, in terms of menu, customers, ingredients etc.? What about imagining an interior design to match your idea of having diner in a European capital at the beginning of third millennium?

Mircea Varlam: Everything is connected to the idea of transparency. This is valid for customers – ingredients relationship, but also in terms of customers – kitchen relationship. We promote the concept of working exclusively with farmers which cultivate and develop clean and natural products. These farmers reject the use of chemicals, hormones and antibiotics for their crops, denying exclusive profit, yet focusing on quality.

We are committed to work exclusively farmers with respect for nature and its organic course. This is our concept and the type of transparency I'm talking about. We have an open kitchen, precisely for this. Anyone is able to observe freely the entire process of creating exquisite, savory taste from natural ingredients such as vegetables, fruits, cheeses or meat.

PIATRAONLINE: Your site description mentions nature and revival of tradition. Ypu might say that in terms of cooking, tradition was always there: as a recipe, cooking and preserving techniques, plating etc. What about Romanian gastronomy and heritage in terms of cooking, throughout a time filled with cooking shows, recipe sites, YouTube videos – all within a click of a button?

Mircea Varlam: The history of Romanian gastronomy is a neglected heritage, resulted from our desire to break away from tradition. Romania has a huge variety of ingredients, unreachable for many countries. MAIZE will prove it to you and it will certainly be a pleasant surprise.

PIATRAONLINE: Considering this whole restaurant experience as a complex-sensorial one decided by many factors, in your opinion what are the most important details when it comes to restaurant design?

Mircea Varlam: Everything counts. For a complete experience, you should take into account every details, no matter how small. At MAIZE the most amazing is the open kitchen, yet without the interior design, it would have no impact. When you manage to create harmony between the five basic senses, you can be proud of your result. The only problem is a constant variable, resulted from the many preferences of every client.

Mircea Varlam: I not a fan of judging people, yet, I am aware of my knowledge developed in time, and my progress. When you start building a concept you have to meditate on every step. First of all you need to define your position and the way to proceed with your introduction, so you can build an identity. As soon as you establish this, you have defined your look so you can build a proper visual identity. Having decided on brand colors, logo and fonts, you know your status and you can also decide your location. Then, you begin the construction part.

Involved in the MAIZE project, we learned from our chef, Alex Petricean, that kitchen equipment should be as important as interior design. If you really want my feedback, this is it: entrepreneurs usually build from parts, ignoring a lot of aspects that implicitly break harmony from the whole. It should reflect the plate of every client, yet subtle enough so that they could not understand and therefore not correct. You should know that still, there are a lot of entrepreneurs with sufficient training and experience, so that they could offer more and more amazing locations.

PIATRAONLINE: MAIZE has two Volakas marble countertops. Why did you decide to have natural stone? What is the message conveyed by these marble countertops to MAIZE customers, in a restaurant with the headline "la nouvelle cuisine roumaine"?

Mircea Varlam: It's simple. After discussing this with my architect, Alina Stoian, I received design proposals underlining the connection between MAIZE, earth and nature. That's why we decided to use natural stone as we also selected natural wood, with more then 100 years old.

PIATRAONLINE: What do you think about the curent use of natural stone as an element of the interior and exterior design?

Mircea Varlam: I feel that natural stone is a timeless classic detail. It's always been used and it's always going to be used.

photo: Daria Tuca

Mircea Varlam (40 years old) graduated philosophy and journalism, followed by post-graduate courses of management and marketing at Open University. He always dreamt of being entrepreneur and spend time developing his ideas. His HORECA experience begins in 2012, with a Japanese bistro that became Yoshi Sushi & Teppanyaki Restaurant, with him involved as a partner. He likes quality stuff and rejects compromises. Besides, he is a father of 3, loves his family likes to practice sports and also enjoys watch it.