Bar Centrale Bar Refurbishment — Tauranga CBD

Bar Centrale is a refurbishment of an existing heritage corner venue, and the new work declares itself in stone. Verde Antico — a deep green Marble — clads the leaners, frames a portal to the window nook, and turns the corner beneath the counter soffit with its veining carried across the junction. Against it, gold-veined slab walls run book-matched behind the banquettes and face the open-kitchen pass. The palette is old-world and specific: brass-edged Oak tabletops on black cast bases, Walnut bentwood chairs and stools, olive leather bolsters, warm kauri floors underfoot.

The dining room reads as one calm sequence. Tables step toward the Marble-clad pass, where a white-tiled kitchen band sits behind the slab front. The banquette run holds a quiet rhythm — repeating place settings, brass-trimmed edges, the book-matched Marble wall behind. At the window, bentwood stools gather under a beaded globe chandelier, flowers set on a brass-edged ledge, the whole nook read through the Marble portal.

The stonework is where the fitout earns its keep. Leaner tops are polished slab with crisp mitred edges; at the external corner under the counter soffit, the veining continues across the junction rather than breaking at it. That continuity is the difference between cladding and stonework — the finish holds at fixture level, not just at eye level. The same discipline shows in the softer materials: a bottle-green velvet drape held by a Verde Marble tieback plaque, hung against the blackened heritage stair and its runner.

The light is kept soft, warm and low-glare. Beaded globe chandeliers and seeded-glass pendants throw it through the room and let the Marble and brass do the lifting. A bar trades hard, and the surfaces where hands and glassware land are stone, Oak and leather — materials that take a night’s service and wipe back. The heritage fabric of the building, its blackened sashes and stair, stays legible through the new work rather than behind it.