If you’ve been quietly hoping for an opportunity to eat a high-priced meal after you purchase some luxury leather goods, you may finally get your chance. Louis Vuitton is reportedly opening its first-ever restaurant and cafe inside its new Osaka, Japan flagship store.
According to WWD, Le Café V will have pride of place on the top floor of the four-level store, and the menu has reportedly been designed by Japanese chef Yosuke Suga, the former executive chef of L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon in Tokyo. The adjacent restaurant, Sugalabo V, will serve dinner to an ultra-exclusive guest list—which reflects the M.O. of Suga’s original Sugalabo location, which is apparently as difficult to find as it is to get in to.
WWD reports that artist and designer Tokujin Yoshioka created the visuals for the restaurant’s charger plates, which will pay homage to that unmistakable LV monogram. (One of Yoshioka’s previous projects was to design the rose-gold torch that will be used for this summer’s Olympic games, which will be held in Tokyo, so a plate was probably a piece of cake… quite possibly an LV logo cake.)
The building itself was designed by Jun Aoki, whose portfolio also includes the Louis Vuitton stores in New York City and in Hong Kong. The retail floors of the Osaka location are scheduled to open on February 1, while Le Café V and Sugalabo will both debut on February 15.
In November, luxury conglomerate LVMH (Moët Hennessy – Louis Vuitton) paid a cool $16.2 billion to buy iconic 182-year-old jeweler Tiffany & Co. Earlier this week, Tiffany & Co. announced that it would soon be opening its first-ever European Blue Box Cafe.
The sure-to-be chic eatery will be in the ritzy London department store Harrods, and it will become the fourth Blue Box Cafe; Tiffany’s other cafes are inside its own stores in Hong Kong, New York City, and Shanghai. (The New York location is currently closed while that Fifth Avenue flagship is being renovated.)
“We have a long-standing presence in London and by introducing The Tiffany Blue Box Cafe here, we offer our customers in this city yet another way to immerse themselves in the world of Tiffany,” Richard Moore, Tiffany’s divisional vice president for Global Store Design and Creative Visual Merchandising, said.
Guests can take that ‘immerse themselves in Tiffany’ part pretty literally: each cafe has been designed to make visitors feel like they’re sitting inside one of the company’s famous blue boxes.
The Telegraph reports that the breakfast menu in London will include smoked-salmon bagels, ‘Manhattan waffles,’ and avocado toast. Afternoon tea is based around British finger sandwiches and scones, while dinner will feature a Central Park salad, 57th Street Flatbread and ‘Charles Lewis Tiffany’ truffle-roasted chicken. Yes, all of those meals will be served on Tiffany-blue bone china which is, of course, available to purchase at Harrods.
The Blue Box Cafe is currently taking reservations, and is expected to serve its first Audrey Hepburn-inspired croissants in February.
Source: www.foodandwine.com