An omakase counter hides beneath an art museum in Bergen: in the basement of KODE Stenersen, NÆRSTUDIO lines Hos Bobby with shoji screens, clay plaster and pale timber for chef Bobby Buaprakone.
The name translates as at Bobby's, and the possessive carries the premise. Chef Bobby Buaprakone's omakase restaurant runs on the format's central exchange: guests give up the menu and watch each course assembled in front of them across a pale timber counter. Stian Tomin Nærøy of Bergen practice NÆRSTUDIO shapes the setting around that transaction, Japanese in its vocabulary, Nordic in its restraint.
Finding the restaurant takes intent. It sits in the basement of KODE Stenersen, one of Bergen's art museums, behind steel doors cut into a board-formed concrete wall, unannounced enough that first-timers are advised to look up the address. Inside, the concrete shell hands over to clay plaster in a muted green, grey carpet underfoot, timber boards overhead and a concealed band of light running where ceiling meets wall.
The rooms curve rather than corner. Sliding screens of slender wood lattice and translucent infill filter the light; arched openings lined in timber and hung with split noren curtains connect the counter to a second dining room. Over the bar, a coffered canopy of backlit veneer panels glows like a paper lantern pressed flat, and the counter front beneath it carries a scalloped, gouge-textured relief that catches the underlight. Timber stools with grey wool seats pull up against it.
The kitchen states the third material plainly. A freestanding prep island wrapped in moss-green finger tiles holds a sunken stainless basin under a steel extraction hood, knives racked on a wooden stand along the back counter. Wood, clay and tile do the work that ornament would do elsewhere. Upstairs the museum carries on; one floor down, the same habit of close looking is redirected at a cutting board.
