Masa restaurant - Bogotá, Colombia

If you ask us, every residential neighbourhood should have a restaurant this slick. For New York-based Studio Cadena, the client’s brief contained significant challenges, not the least of which was how to shoehorn a dining establishment into the streetscape in a way that stood out enough to attract business, but without offending the prosperous residents.

The solution was to demarcate the 7,500 sqft space into connected volumes – specifically, a café and bakery, dining room, retail space, and al fresco patio, the ensemble cleverly wrapped up in a discreet façade of small vertical ridges punctuated with triangular windows of varying sizes that create, especially at night, a warmly lit beacon.

Inside, guests peer out at alternating cut-outs of street scenes and a light, airy interior furnished with paper globes, terrazzo tiled floor, walls of textured concrete and ribbons of sienna-hued metal mesh that drape decorously from the ceiling. Circular air-wells, judiciously placed mirrors and large sliding doors add to a soothing indoor-outdoor effect.

Co-owner and chef Silvana Villegas injects a chilled artisanal mood into her cooking, a legacy probably from her years in New York, to deliver artfully homey dishes, where even the slow-cooked steak sandwich is served with caramelised onions and avocado on crusty house-baked miche levain bread, with a side of plantain and yuca chips. §