NZ Visual Diary - entry 434

looking in - stained glass and patrons

I ate once at Coco’s Cantina and was not favourably impressed with the food. That said, the restaurant has a cult following, so my opinion may matter little.

I am impressed with the cantina’s attention to aesthetic detail that makes for a great K Road vibe. That sensibility begins with the presentation of its front facade. In a previous entry, I attempted to capture that feel, beginning with the establishment’s bright orange front door.

On the ocassion of the current blog entry, I focused on two impressions of the cantina’s interior as seen through a plate glass window on the left and an opened passageway on the right.

A saintly depiction in stained glass of the Australian musician Nick Cave sits within the restaurant some distance from the front window. The reflctive distortion of the exterior light against the window, however, makes it appear that the stained glass mural is superimposed eerily on the surface of the glass. The art work anchors the bohemian mood of the interior, but — from the outside — it exudes an other-worldly radiance.

The view through open passageway is equally ethereal and again due largely to lighting, although in this instance the chimerical feel is the result of rather dim lighting. My attempt in post-processing to illuminate the interior rendered the patrons in ghostly relief.

I think my photograph is a quirky nod to the restaurant’s ‘left of cool’ vibe.