I visited the Hotel Il Palazzo, which opened in Fukuoka City in 1989 as Japan’s first design hotel by world-renowned architect Aldo Rossi and leading Japanese interior designer Shigeru Uchida. The re-design and reopening of the Hotel Il Palazzo in October 2023, after 34 years of renovation, is still fresh in everyone’s minds.

The powerful design of the building’s exterior, which stands out from the rest of the city, is a shock to the eye, and as if inviting you into another world, you pass through the entrance and descend to the basement, where you will find a large lounge “EL DORADO” that has been redesigned with stripes, columns, red, blue and green color scheme, and other original design elements of the hotel. The symbolic golden façade soaring in the center and Shigeru Uchida’s “Dancing Water” in front of it welcome guests in a spectacular manner.

El Dorado, a buffet-style food presentation restaurant, uses SHIONARI and ReIRABO series tableware for their guests to serve their food for themselves. We spoke with Mr. Daisuke Yamamoto, Patissier at Hotel Il Palazzo, about the background and process of choosing our tableware for the reopening.

“In the course of repeated visits to exhibitions, tableware specialty stores, restaurants, and hotels to select tableware, we came across the SHIONARI tableware series by yumiko iihoshi porcelain and fell in love with it at first sight. The smooth texture and matte finish matched the interior image of Il Palazzo, which was the deciding factor. Since this is a buffet style where guests themselves take the dishes in their hands, it is of course important to imagine the texture, ease of use, and the appearance of multiple plates lined up on the table, but we were also conscious that the tableware would always be available on the 11-meter long buffet table, and that the tableware would be part of the food presentation, along with the food itself.”

SHIONARI is a series that proposes a neutral image that can fit into any space or scene, without being categorized into a specific image or genre. In contrast to its light, thin construction, SHIONARI is stain-resistant, durable, and strong enough for home use as well as for professional settings such as hotels and restaurants. While many people, from overnight guests to visitors, use the tableware daily at El Dorado without interruption from breakfast to dinner time, we are happy to hear that very few pieces of tableware have ever been chipped.

It was refreshing to see the new look of our tableware illuminated in an overwhelming space that was calculated down to the smallest detail, not to mention the furniture and lighting.” As Mr. Yamamoto said, “Since the food is served in the lounge space of a well-designed hotel, we believe that the tableware must also play a role as a component of the well-designed hotel space”, when the legendary design hotel incorporates the essence of modern design and creates new creation, we hope that our tableware can play a part in that.

HOTEL IL PALAZZO 
EL DORADO
〒810-0003　
3-13-1 Haruyoshi, Chuo-ku, Fukuoka
0570-009-915
https://ilpalazzo.jp/

Photo Tsugumi Meno
Interview & text Natsuko Kobayashi

Please click here to see the SHIONARI series introduced in the article.