Toronto restaurant Sara is a place of 'calm and escape'

Photography: Kurtis Chen, via ODAMI

Local studio Odami stripped back a Toronto townhouse to create ultra-minimal interiors for Entertainment District restaurant, Sara.

The Victorian property was completely gutted, with its floors removed to create a vaulted space on the ground floor and double-height dining room on the first floor. Layers of paint have been removed from the outside of the house to reveal the original brickwork.

Inside, Odami has designed a ‘blank slate’ for diners, employing a minimal colour palette of pale blue, grey and soft pink.

Velvet banquette seating and oak panelling wrap around Sara’s tables, which sit beneath white ceilings. Walls are also left unadorned. The studio says it hoped to ‘channel the sensation of being at the edge of a body of water – a place of calm and escape.’