Reopening this month: Mãos, the restaurant at Blue Mountain School, a rarefied art, craft, and fashion hub in London’s Shoreditch. We visited back in 2018 when the six-story showcase debuted. Today, we’re returning for a new look at the two dining rooms, each filled with design ideas we’d like to borrow—or just stare at.

takes its name and attitude from North Carolina’s famous experimental art school Black Mountain College that flourished in the thirties and forties. It’s the latest project from creative couple Christie and James Brown (see their equally eye-opening in Whitechapel, a Georgian townhouse for rent). For Mãos, they enlisted young, experimental chef Edoardo Pellicano and American jack-of-many-trades designer Tyler Hays of BDDW to create an experience that’s exalted at every level. Join us for a look.

Photography courtesy of Blue Mountain School.

Above: The restaurant was designed by the Browns in collaboration with who orchestrated the conversion of the whole building. The main dining room has raw gypsum plaster walls “spread roughly by hand, rather than smoothly floated,” specifies lead architect Owen Watson. “Unlike the white plaster in the States or mainland Europe, British plaster is naturally pink.” (See another London project featuring pink plaster .)

There’s one seating a night for a maximum of 16 diners who are treated like dinner party guests by chef Pellicano and team. Originally furnished with a single communal table (see it Before ), the main room now has small tables that can be spaced. The are by Remodelista favorite .

Above: A lone diner gets a seat at the island. The menu is kept under wraps and presented at the end of the meal; the cooking is Portuguese and Japanese-inspired and consists of many small courses. House-made ferments, preserves, and “living juices” are a speciality. Eighteen months after opening, Mãos earned a Michelin star.
Above: The tables and benches are 6a designs fabricated at Blue Mountain School’s own wood shop. The ceramic table lamp is by Tyler Hays of BDDW, who only shows his work in his NYC flagship and ; a small space in Milan; and at Blue Mountain School.
Above: Tyler Hays lined the Chef’s Table space with his signature hand-painted tiles on the walls and floor, all made at his ceramics studio in Philadelphia. It has a glass-door view into the kitchen and is available only for private groups.
Above: The live-edge and leather-finished are also Hays designs from BDDW, as are the pitchers and glasses on the shelves. See more and .

reopens on May 19 and is now accepting .

More plaster and tile inspiration: