Hathaway Celebrates the Many Charms of Rattan

Designed by Bertram Ng and StudioMyte, Hathaway is a modern Asian restaurant where the elegant use of humble rattan represents the restaurant’s regionally inspired cuisine realised with simple ingredients

At Hathaway in Singapore’s Dempsey Hill, rattan takes centre stage. Along the windows of the restaurant, which makes its home in a charming colonial building, rattan ‘umbrellas’ provide intimacy for window seats. The material also panels walls, accents food display, wraps a standalone cabinet and features in the chairs. The modern-Asian restaurant was designed by Bertram Ng and husband-and-wife team Terence Tang and Yap Mei Ying, who helm interior design firm StudioMyte and Studio TT Architecture. The trio of architects first met while studying at the National University of Singapore and regrouped years later for this project.

Hathaway’s gastronomic offerings pay tribute to the region’s eclectic food culture. For example, the Forager’s Eggs Benedict pairs trout roe with challah bread, and the Sher Wagyu Tenderloin is given zing with cincalok chilli, a traditional sambal. This ambition to work at the threshold of time and culture is embodied in the restaurant’s name: Hathaway is an old English surname for someone who lived by a path across a heath. 

‘Keeping in mind Hathaway’s ethos of preserving local identity, most of the materials we chose were fairly common in local building and furniture making, such as wood, terrazzo, brass and marble,’ Ng says. ‘In particular, we wanted to showcase the use of rattan as it represents craft, the human touch and the vernacular — all qualities that resonate with Hathaway’s dining concept.’ In Asia, rattan has multifarious traditional uses: for shelter, food baskets, furniture and even canes for wayward children. And Yap says that while the material is seen less in today’s homes, its use revives nostalgia for a time past. 

Brass accents and sleek forms elevate the rattan’s casual feel, and oak veneers complement its tonality while creating a sense of intimacy in the space. The interior has a strong relationship to its context, which is lush with matured trees. The existing building’s large glass windows open to this green view and also allow ample natural light to stream in during the day. The domed rattan elements along the windows makes the most of this panorama by both framing views out and drawing curious looks in. 

On the inner wall, partitions cover large columns whose hollows are used for recessed seating and food displays. A cosy banquette seat sculpted from an awkward niche has become the restaurant’s star Instagram spot — a boon for the establishment in an age where food news spreads faster via social media than anywhere else. ‘While it wasn’t our main objective to create an Instagrammable space, we did want to design a memorable experience for diners,’ Tang says. But for the design team, the real star of the project was the opportunity to realise new, meaningful encounters with old, modest materials. 

Text / Luo Jingmei
Images / Shawn Low