MASU is an Ode to Japan

Designed by Tokyo-based Keiji Ashizawa, MASU is a celebration of Japanese cuisine and culture and the restaurant’s Vietnamese roots

The year 2020 was unique in many ways. The global pandemic and resulting restrictions pushed the boundaries of creativity, resulting in new situations and ways of working. Keiji Ashizawa, founder of Tokyo-based Keiji Ashizawa Design, can attest to this: for the first time in his career, he had to remotely design a project set to open in a city he’d never worked in.

Standing just opposite a 15th-century Buddhist temple and the headquarters of the Buddhist Sangha of Vietnam in Hanoi, MASU was born of the owner’s fascination with Japan. ‘The owner initially contacted us to purchase our furniture for her own apartment. We don’t usually work on projects that we can’t travel to, but the owner’s passion for Japanese cuisine and culture convinced us to take this on,’ explains Ashizawa, who is also behind Grillno, another new restaurant closer to home. 

From the first Zoom call all the way to submission of the final plan, the design of MASU — named after the traditional cubic wooden cups used for drinking sake — took four months to complete, with the support of the client and local architects and construction professionals.

Ashizawa drew inspiration from traditional Vietnamese townhouses and Japanese machiya. ‘Based on the machiya-style louvre, we decided to use straight lines for both the exterior and the interior,’ he says. Inside, the layout was designed for a smooth flow and movement between spaces. ‘I tried to create movement paths so that customers and service processes don’t overlap’, Ashizawa says. ‘That led us to creating many different spaces and atmospheres.’

Featuring plenty of wood, another reference to Japanese architecture, the earthy palette helps shape an authentic atmosphere that is aligned with the culinary concept. ‘From the menu, we understood MASU would have a broad range of customers from lunchtime to dinner’, Ashizawa says. The challenge was ensuring that ‘the restaurant feels lively all day as a fine dining restaurant, but not too moody during the daytime.’ Ashizawa says that they also used natural materials as much as possible to reflect MASU’s emphasis on market-fresh ingredients.

In order to keep the space clean and clutter free, the designer avoided adding too many elements — ‘The result is a minimal, succinct design,’ he says. Adorned with Isamu Noguchi’s pendants and locally made furniture, MASU is, as Ashizawa puts it, a space ‘where you can experience Japan in Vietnam’.

Text / Karine Monié
Images / Hoang-Anh Nguyen