Playing a pivotal role in society’s collective post-pandemic future, emphasis has been placed on the importance of empowering hospitality leaders to play an active role in rebuilding trust, reassuring wary diners while still finding novel ways to excite and appeal to them.

While hygiene and social distancing are more frequently becoming embedded into the dining experience, it’s important to acknowledge the challenges and opportunities that lie within strategies that make eating out feel both safe and welcoming.

It’s important to acknowledge the challenges and opportunities that lie within strategies that make eating out feel both safe and welcoming.

Striking a harmonious balance between the two, Amsterdam’s Serres Séparées project by Mediamatic sees tables set up within individual greenhouses, allowing diners to follow social distancing measures without sacrificing conviviality. In a similar vein, various venues in Melbourne have embraced igloo dining, hinting at how future restaurant interiors could borrow from the design cues of these indoor-outdoor dining models.

Adopting the approach of year-round al fresco dining, Lithuania’s capital Vilnius is allocating some of its public spaces to bars and cafés, turning parts of the city into sprawling open-air eateries. High-end restaurants are taking a similarly casual approach, with one of the world’s most renowned restaurants – Noma in Copenhagen – recently reopened as an outdoor wine and burger bar.

Furthermore, new opportunities to support the restaurant trade are expected to emerge as urban farming is adopted in cities worldwide, with resilient, sustainable and local sources of produce to plate initiatives emerge.

In the months to come as lockdown measures gradually relax across the globe, eating outside the home will become an escape from the everyday, with bars and restaurants developing their services to cater for cautious yet curious customers.

Escapism will be increasingly important in restaurant design – creating worlds that have a slightly surreal or special experience is a must.

According to a report by design agency Roar, ‘escapism will be increasingly important in restaurant design – creating worlds that have a slightly surreal or special experience is a must’.

Echoing these ideas, experience design studio Bompas & Parr also speculates on the notion of refreshed indulgence, with consumers presumed to seek playful, extravagant gastronomic experiences that are in contrast with pandemic rationing and sanitised surfaces.

As we bring to life some of the country’s most ambitious projects, we’re looking to these thought-leaders within the pandemic dining market as a source of inspiration.