From London to Cape Town, this trio of forward-thinking hotel restaurants and bars boast an elevated design sense, attracting guests and locals alike.

Café Got and Fauna

Café Got occupies the ground floor of the Kimpton Vividora

Local design firm El Equipo Creativo, in collaboration with Kimpton’s creative director and senior vice president of design Ave Bradley, wanted to integrate the 156-room Kimpton Vividora hotel with the lively street where it resides in Barcelona’s historic Old City. Indeed, the gut renovation of a former 5-Star hotel is embodied by two visually distinct eateries, Café Got and Fauna. The former, with its street-facing façade, serves as the double-height entrance to the hotel with cascading glass lamps that connect to the lobby on the mezzanine level. Partitions and custom turquoise ceramic tiles pay tribute to Barcelona’s traditional art form, while the stone block bar contrasts travertine floors, terracotta-hued carpets, and red wooden finishes. For second-floor restaurant Fauna, the design team created a space that felt like “going to a friend’s house for dinner,” says El Equipo Creativo cofounder and creative director Natali Canas del Pozo. Fittingly, guests find materials typical of a Barcelona home, including colorful ceramic floor patterns, an abundance of greenery, and handpainted graphic ceilings. “Color is part of the city’s essence, [and we decided on] a powerful palette and some risky contrasts,” adds Canas del Pozo. “This differentiating quality gives a unique personality to the restaurant.”

Gigi

The crown jewel of the Gorgeous George hotel in Cape Town is indoor-outdoor rooftop restaurant Gigi, which embodies the hotel’s unpretentious and eclectic personality. Locally based designer Tristan du Plessis, who also helmed the hotel’s design, “intended the space to be the living room of the downtown area,” he says. Refined and chic, warm wood mixes with moody green and muted hues that are buoyed by plentiful plants and details like handpainted blue and white tiles. It’s a union of past and present that reflects the property’s storied history: In the 1940s, two buildings—one Art Deco and the other New Edwardian style—were stitched together to create a single hotel. Gigi, for its part, is helping reinvent Cape Town’s hotel scene. Whether a tourist or a local, guests imbibe at the alfresco dining area, taking in views of the city “while sitting in a green urban oasis that is completely hidden and unexpected from the street level,” Plessis adds.

The Nest

At the Treehouse Hotel London, the more affordable sibling to Barry Sternlicht’s 1 Hotels brand, a carefree sense of optimism reigns. A stripped-down aesthetic characterizes interiors, from the lobby to the guestrooms and the Nest restaurant, perched atop the hotel. “The standout feature is the rooftop bar and terrace with prime views over the incredible London skyline,” says Sam Smith, executive creative director for local firm Keane, which collaborated on the project with SH Hotels & Resorts’ in-house team, New York firm Rockwell Group, and Nantucket, Massachusetts studio Audrey Sterk Design. A kaleidoscope of colors and patterns span the window-filled space, while a green canopy is punctuated with lighting that instills both intimacy and wonder. “We wanted to meld American and British cultural references,” says SH Hotels & Resorts’ senior vice president of design Tony Machado. “We layered items that seemingly had no business being placed together then finessed them until they felt right—a look both accidental and intentional.”

Photos by Adria Goula and courtesy of El Equipo Creativo, Claus Brechenmacher, Reiner Baumann Photography, and Eric Laignel

This article originally appeared in HD’s September 2020 issue.