J.AR OFFICE’s Norte in Mermaid Beach wins Best Restaurant Design 2025 for its moody, modernist take on coastal dining.
There’s a certain audacity required to turn your back on the ocean when you’re designing a restaurant on the Gold Coast, but that’s precisely what J.AR OFFICE has done with Norté, a Latin American restaurant and bar in Mermaid Beach that has just claimed the Eat Drink Design Awards 2025 title for Best Restaurant Design. In a setting where most venues scramble for water views and sun-drenched terraces, Norté offers something more: darkness, texture and theatrical restraint.
“The client brief was to create a moody, sensory dining experience that captured the essence of South American cuisine,” says Jared Webb, Founder and Director of J.AR OFFICE. “Drawing from the modernist Luis Barragán era of Mexico City, Norté is intentionally ‘anti-Gold Coast’ in its aesthetic, eschewing ocean views in favour of an internalised, atmospheric environment that offers insulation from the Queensland sun.”
