Muee Restaurant
In the summer of 2020, a friend who came to us chose a place to administrate a restaurant, what he expected was to introduce the local hotpot from Hunan, his hometown to Beijing. The restaurant is located in Hepingli, Dongcheng District in Beijing, a compound mixed with offices and old residential areas beside the Second Ring road. The original space is an idle warehouse, the first storey is multi-column, while the second has a higher ceiling, the north and south sides of the room has a dense piece of wall and large windows, the south side of the building has an aged pagoda tree.
Photography by © Weiqi Jin
The hotpot is a clay casserole. The friend described the prototype of the restaurant in his mind like this: “It is a plain cavernous space; diners enjoy the food that has been boiled by the simplest way and feel the original flavor of the ingredients.” Under such a unique proposition, we expected to find a way to return to the origin of spatial feeling, and focus on the connections between food, utensils and customs’ experience in a characteristic environment. In our journey in North Africa in the early years, we visited the white and khakis houses of people living in the oases north of the Sahara. The edges are rounded and straightforward, arched and curved surfaces emphasize a rustic and cavernous atmosphere in the constructions. As human beings originally lived, caves formed the most primitive space experience in human memory. We desi...