Restaurant & Bar Design Awards 2026: Saikindō and Carbone Riviera Win the Top Prizes

Saikindo, a Japanese hi-fi bar designed by AvroKO inside the Four Seasons Hotel Abu Dhabi at Al Maryah Island, was named Best Overall Bar at the 2026 Restaurant Bar Design Awards. Carbone Riviera, the Major Food Group seafood restaurant at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, designed by Martin Brudnizki Design Studio, was named Best Overall Restaurant. The UK competition, now in its 18th year, chose 53 category winners from 225 shortlisted projects.

● In brief

The bar. Saikindō opened in November 2025 at the end of the hotel lobby, behind what looks like a fashion boutique selling embroidered sukajan jackets. AvroKO built the room around a central DJ booth and drew on Japan’s 1960s Metabolism movement and the timber craft of vintage speakers, according to Wallpaper*. The bar also won the Hotel category and the title for the Middle East and Africa.

The restaurant. Carbone Riviera occupies the Bellagio’s former Picasso dining room and seats 240 guests. Brudnizki based the design on Picasso’s years in Vallauris and told Galerie magazine that he returned the ten ceramic pieces left from the original restaurant to the room. It also won the Hotel category and the title for the Americas.

The regions. Lazy Lion, a cocktail bar by Astet Studio in Budapest’s Adria Palace, is Best Europe Restaurant or Bar. Billy’s, a Cantonese restaurant by Alexander &CO. and SA Studio in a restored homestead near Queenstown, wins Australia and Pacific. Hana no Kumo, a kappo counter by HBA on the 38th floor of The Henderson in Hong Kong, wins Asia.

The ceremony. The trophies will be presented at a ceremony in London in late October 2026.

● Why it matters

Several of this year’s winners are restaurants and bars in historic buildings. Carbone Riviera replaced the Bellagio’s Picasso restaurant, and Brudnizki told Galerie magazine that he returned the ten ceramic pieces left from the original to the room. Lazy Lion opened in a ground-floor unit of a Budapest palace that had stood empty for years, and Billy’s occupies a 19th-century gold-rush homestead near Queenstown. The Marble Bar beneath the Hilton Sydney, built in 1893 and rebuilt in 1973, won the Hotel category.

Brands from outside hospitality are among the winners as well. The tequila maker Clase Azul México opened Casa de los Leones, its first brand home, in a restored 1940s mansion in Mexico City and won the Heritage Building category. Rodd & Gunn, the New Zealand menswear label, won Surface Interiors for its Melbourne flagship, where a dining room, a cellar wine bar and a members’ bar share a 1930 building with the shop, part of a wider move that has turned luxury stores into destinations.

The Sustainability category went to Odachi, a Japanese restaurant in Kuwait City whose 38 wall and ceiling panels the Barcelona workshop Lamáquina printed by robot from recycled PETG reinforced with glass fibre. A year earlier, the same prize went to Roganic in Hong Kong, built from timber recovered from typhoon-felled trees and demolished buildings.