Header: Ernest Theofilus
Meatguy Steakhouse is located in the SCBD Park Jakarta, Indonesia, and is a restaurant completed in June 2024 that was designed to evoke the atmosphere of a cave. This restaurant’s mix of curated architecture, interior design, and lighting makes one feel like they’ve entered a warm time capsule where they are about to taste succulent beef. The project, designed by Tektonik with lighting by Nurco Lighting, is the accolade of the Bar and Restaurant Lighting Design category at the LIT Awards.
Stepping into the darkness
The restaurant’s exterior instantly tells you where you are getting yourself into. It features a corten steel facade composed of irregular, angular planes with vertical gaps that expose rock-like surfaces. Integrated lighting highlights these gaps at night, giving the structure a warm, orangey glow that emphasizes its cave-like feel.
Once inside, the outside ambiance becomes almost overbearing as the entrance leads into a narrow corridor with textured walls resembling natural stone. The corridor is dimly illuminated by 1800K strip lighting positioned at the base to produce a glow similar to firelight.
Deeper in the cave, the reception area features a circular ceiling cutout with a stretched membrane diffuser that distributes warm, indirect light across the space. Next to this area, a lounge with curved wooden walls and built-in shelving gives guests the possibility of staying in a more intimate setting. Recessed lighting accents the texture of the materials used in the interior design.
A unique dining experience
The main dining hall is the start of this project and is structured around a central bar. The bar counter is made of illuminated onyx stone, while a suspended circular metal structure above it holds bottles and additional lighting elements. Around it, the seating arrangement consists of dark wooden tables and leather chairs positioned under ambient light that helps create divisions among the different tables.
Downlights with a 10º beam angle and a tunable white range of 1800K–3000K, set at 2200K, focus on the guest tables, enhancing the presentation of the dishes. The surrounding walls are made of raw, exposed rock surfaces that remind the guests of truly dining in an ancient system of caves.
The lighting design applied to the space was thoughtfully chosen to balance visibility and ambiance, aesthetics, and functionality, emphasizing the natural textures of the space’s materials while still providing a comfortable dining experience. The combination of interesting architectural forms, unique raw materials, and carefully controlled illumination makes this design, and an interesting detail might have gone unnoticed: there aren’t many decorative elements. The ambiance makes the space, and this could never have been achieved without the curated lighting design created by Nurco Lighting.
