Feng Full by Office AIO
Feng Full marks the first restaurant venture by Lao Ding Feng, a time-honored pastry brand extending its heritage into contemporary dining.
Drawing from its Northeastern Chinese roots, the all-day food bar brings together a wholesome daytime menu, dinner service and a cocktail-led night setting. For Office AIO, the brief was to translate the warmth, generosity, directness and humour associated with Northeastern culture into an interior that feels familiar while remaining distinctly contemporary.
Located on a prominent corner within the sunken plaza of an outdoor mall, the L-shaped site presented a fragmented layout, interrupted by structural elements and multiple mandatory access points. Office AIO responded by taking a strong approach to the restaurant’s programme, using a sequence of open counters to organise movement and connect the different functions within the interior. A dessert counter occupies the mall entrance, followed by a large dining counter that reveals the open kitchen around the bend, while a linear cocktail counter addresses the steady flow of customers arriving from the sunken plaza. Together, these elements establish a visual connection across the restaurant and allow the atmosphere to transition naturally from casual daytime dining to a more animated social setting after dark.
The interior draws on the familiarity of everyday domestic environments. A coffered ceiling, chequered parquet flooring and a clay-tiled open kitchen bar introduce a warm material language associated with home, creating an inviting foundation for the dining experience. This sense of familiarity is set against the fluted cast-concrete façade, whose near-brutalist character gives the restaurant a strong contemporary presence from the exterior. The contrast between the two conditions captures the central idea behind Feng Full, bringing together the grounded qualities of Northeastern culture with a more expressive contemporary identity.
Furniture and lighting extend this conversation between the familiar and the unexpected. Pieces such as the GUBI Floor Lamp, commonly known as the Chinese Hat, the GUBI Daumiller Side Chair, &Tradition Betty Chair and Enzo Mari’s Autoprogetazione chair introduce recognisable forms and a sense of material continuity. These are paired with more striking interventions, including a cocktail bar clad in honeycomb aluminium with an emerald-green frosted acrylic countertop, illuminated by Mario Tsai’s Song Pendants. Custom sunburst veneer dining tables are paired with Mati Sipiora’s sculptural Cosmo Chandelier, bringing a more decorative quality to the dining area.
At the mall-side entrance, a pastry counter recalls Lao Ding Feng’s origins as a heritage pastry brand. Gently illuminated by four rows of handmade Cast Lamps by Philippe Malouin for Resident, it operates as both a point of recognition and a threshold into the restaurant. Its position also allows the brand’s pastry heritage to remain visible beyond conventional dining hours, connecting the restaurant’s contemporary identity with the history of Lao Ding Feng.
Colour is introduced selectively across an otherwise calm material palette. Warm oak, textured warm-grey plaster, parquet flooring and timber furniture establish a restrained backdrop, while vivid green frosted table edges, metallic bar surfaces and pink glass-clad wine and meat fridges bring moments of visual intensity. Expressive pendants, golden accents from Santa & Cole’s Lámina Dorada and mirrored walls add further contrast. The interplay recalls the bright floral fabrics often found within Northeastern Chinese homes, where bold colour can sit comfortably alongside more understated domestic materials.
Through this balance of warmth and disruption, Feng Full captures a distinctly Northeastern sense of confidence and openness. The restaurant feels grounded in cultural familiarity without becoming nostalgic, while its contemporary interventions give the setting an energy suited to its changing role throughout the day. Office AIO’s approach allows heritage to remain present through material, atmosphere and social character, creating a dining environment that is welcoming, expressive and unmistakably of its own time.
