The winner of this year’s Eat Out VISI Style Award is a thrilling arena for sensory delight.

Interior of FYN Restaurant. Photo supplied.

Walking into FYN is like entering a theatre: moody, dramatic, breathtaking. This year’s winner of the Eat Out VISI Style Award is a show-off in the best sense – you just can’t stop looking.

Interior of FYN Restaurant. Photo supplied.

Peter Tempelhoff’s long-dreamed-of passion project opened in November 2018 with Ashley Moss at the helm, building on the foundations they laid together at Greenhouse in Constantia. But this inner-city space has an entirely new mood and mindset.

Interior of Fyn Restaurant. Photo supplied.

The open kitchen is unlike any you’ve seen before, more down-lit performance art than hot, messy kitchen. While everything is calm, ordered and methodical, with the crew in neat, muted uniforms, the Japanese- inspired food is vibrant and confident. Dishes such as mini Wagyu spring rolls, tender sea trout and game fish sashimi are served on a landscape of smooth wooden frames, pebbles, shells and trays. Cherry blossom-adorned forks wouldn’t be amiss in a geisha’s hairdo. Walls of windows let in the evening colours of blue, purple, silver and amber as the setting sun colours Table Mountain.

Interior of FYN Restaurant. Photo supplied.

For the VISI team, judges of this year’s award, FYN stood out from its contemporaries. Steve Smith, VISI editor, said: “We love the way interior designer Tristan du Plessis has mirrored Peter Tempelhoff’s inventive African-tinged Japanese menu, marrying more robust textures with minimalist Japanese shapes and objects. And that hanging installation from the roof has a dual effect of emphasising the space’s double volume while fashioning a lower ceiling to create intimacy. It’s a masterstroke.”