Restaurante Vila Foz serves fish and seafood from the Portuguese coast (All photos: Vila Foz Hotel & Spa)
Vila Foz Hotel & Spa, the newly opened 68-key hotel in Porto, Portugal, presents guests with a contemporary boutique hotel experience housed within the splendour of a 19th-century manor house.
Surrounded by colourful architecture, exquisite restaurants and the burgeoning creative scene of this coastal city, its visual concept was created by acclaimed Madeiran designer and award-winning artist Nini Andrade Silva using a varied and inspired material palette that includes stone, mirrors and glass as well as mosaics and bronze. The painstaking restoration and creation of the new-build extension for the historic structure was led by Porto-based architecture firm Miguel Cardoso Arquitecto.
Simple lines provide the perfect contrast to the historic structure’s gold-corniced elegance, in a bid to preserve the essence of the property while introducing fresh details, materials, finishes, and textures.
The result is an unexpected harmony that captures both Old World opulence and the zeitgeist of modern-day Porto through a softening of the immensity of Vila Foz’s austere spaces through rich decorative elements and the liberal use of patterns, warm colours, flowing lines and soft finishes.
Given its location in Portugal’s culinary capital, guests can expect superlative gastronomic experiences at the hotel’s eponymous restaurant, with executive chef Arnaldo Azevedo at the helm, serving expertly crafted seasonal cuisine.
The spa — offering traditional and holistic treatments using Maison Codage Paris and Elemental Herbology products — is a peaceful sanctuary of therapy rooms, a Turkish bath and a sauna, an indoor pool and an outdoor relaxation area surrounded by lush, landscaped gardens that provides nourishment for the soul.
This article first appeared on May 27, 2019 in The Edge Malaysia.
