Strawfire, situated within the Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental in Abu Dhabi, is a premium dining destination designed around the theatrical art of Japanese Warayaki cooking.
As guests approach the restaurant, they are greeted by an immersive, interactive curved wall installation designed and engineered by Untitled Project.
Working in close collaboration with Silverfox Studios and Chef Ross, the installation serves as a digital threshold that extends the restaurant's physical design narrative.
It introduces guests to the visceral elements of straw and fire before they enter the dining room, ensuring the arrival sequence perfectly complements the sensory experience inside.
Build an immersive arrival system where the technology is invisible and the chef's vision takes centre stage. The system needed to deliver a polished evergreen piece of content for launch day, while allowing for seamless content refreshes over time. Everything had to be managed remotely without disrupting the luxury hospitality environment.
The sparks and embers from Ross's Warayaki grill became the creative starting point. Those fiery particles — the ones guests see flying from straw as it ignites around the meat — manifest as the interactive particle effects on the curved wall. As guests walk toward the restaurant, the digital environment reacts to their movement, scattering light and embers across a seamless projection surface. The wall becomes a living threshold where the energy of the kitchen reaches out to meet you before you even step inside. Five blended ultra-short-throw projectors and hidden LiDAR sensors make it happen, but none of that is visible. It just feels like magic.
The installation launched with Strawfire's opening and led directly to an ongoing content retainer with Emirates Palace Hotel. We now provide seasonal content updates and remote technical support, keeping the digital experience fresh throughout the year. Strawfire has since won the LIV Hospitality Design Award for Fine Dining and been selected for the MICHELIN Guide Abu Dhabi.
