5 Kuwait Spots Shortlisted for the 2026 Restaurant & Bar Design Awards

• By qrcod.app admin
• 11-09-2026
• Category: Articles

5 Kuwait Restaurants & Cafes Shortlisted for the 2026 Restaurant & Bar Design Awards

Kuwait punched well above its weight in this year's Restaurant & Bar Design Awards, an annual international award recognizing the design and architecture of food and beverage spaces worldwide. Out of 12 Kuwaiti submissions, five made the shortlist across multiple categories — a strong signal of how much local operators are now investing in interior design, materials, and atmosphere as a core part of the dining experience, not an afterthought. Winners will be announced in October 2026.

1) Studio Roast — Café, Sustainability & Ceiling

• Location: Shaab Al-Bahri
• Designed by: Seba Spaces
• Shortlisted in: Café, Sustainability, Ceiling

Founded by BNK Holding and led by two-time Barista Champion Hamad AlMajed, Studio Roast opened in March 2026 as more than a café — it brings roasting, brewing, hospitality, design, and sound together in one space. It's built around Kuwait's first fully air-powered roastery, chosen for the clarity it brings out in each cup, and a sound design collaboration with Bang & Olufsen that shapes the room's mood rather than just filling it with background noise.

2) Chops – Murouj & Chops – The Avenues — Surface Interiors, Luxury & Lighting

• Designed by: Lines
• Shortlisted in: Surface Interiors (Murouj); Luxury and Lighting (The Avenues)

Chops, the "Unusual American Kitchen" known for its playful, chopped-format menu, landed two separate shortlist spots for its two branches. Both locations were designed by Lines, with Murouj recognized for its surface and material work and The Avenues branch standing out for its lighting design and overall sense of luxury.

3) Mizu Mesa — Surface Interiors

• Location: Al-Shaheed Tower, Sharq (KIPCO area)
• Designed by: Aces of Space
• Shortlisted in: Surface Interiors

Mizu Mesa is a Nikkei restaurant — a Japanese cooking base layered with Peruvian ingredients and flavors — and its interior is built around the same idea of dialogue between two worlds. The minimalist, material-led design earned it a Surface Interiors nod alongside some of Kuwait's most talked-about new openings.

4) Odachi — Surface Interiors & Sustainability

• Location: Kuwait City
• Designed by: Seba Spaces
• Shortlisted in: Surface Interiors, Sustainability

Odachi's shortlist nod comes with one of the more technically ambitious builds on this list: 38 wall and ceiling panels produced through large-format robotic 3D printing by a Barcelona-based fabricator, using recycled glass-fiber-reinforced PETG. The panel geometry, developed with architect Seba Orabi, draws on Japanese cultural references — the sweeping motion of traditional odachi swords and Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa — computationally generated to create a continuous, rippling wave effect across the space.

Why this matters for Kuwait's F&B scene

The Restaurant & Bar Design Awards draw entries from dining and drinking spaces around the world, so five shortlisted spots from a single, relatively small market is a meaningful showing. It reflects a broader shift already visible on the ground: Kuwaiti operators are treating interior design, materials, lighting, and even acoustics as differentiators in an increasingly crowded café and restaurant scene — not just the food and the Instagram-friendly plating.

That same attention to detail is worth extending to the menu itself. In a space where every surface, panel, and light fixture has been considered, a printed paper menu — reprinted every time a price or dish changes — can feel out of step with the rest of the room. A well-designed QR-code digital menu lets a venue keep that same level of polish end to end: multi- language menus for international guests, instant updates without reprinting, and high-quality imagery that matches the space itself, all without adding another paper object to a carefully designed table.