Kropka

Photography courtesy, PB/Studio

GdyniaEating Out

Kropka

Get up close and personal over a toasted baguette at compact Polish snack bar...

How the heck does one cram a functional snack bar into a premises measuring just 11.5 sqm? If you’d asked us yesterday we’d have had no idea, but after seeing Kropka in Gdynia, Poland, the answer is clear. You call space magicians PB/Studio and Filip Kozarski, who can do impressive things with the merest sliver of real estate and some modest materials.

Kropka serves up toasted baguettes (a famous Polish fast-food favourite known as zapiekanki) and pastries, and as such preparation equipment can be kept to a minimum – which is lucky in a compact place like this. The designers decided to maximise the space by making use of the walls to hold what implements are required, re-appropriating the old workshop favourite pegboard to provide versatile resting places for chopping boards and utensils. The pegboard also fulfils another purpose too; what could be a very stark interior of all-white is given depth and character by the board’s polka-dot pattern. Don’t get us wrong, you’ve still got to know your dining partner quite well to squeeze in next to them at one of the eat-in nooks, but that could be half the fun…

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