PALMA Wraps a Thai Kitchen in Parota and Wicker Beneath the Brick Vaults of a Sayulita Ruin

Achara is the first Thai restaurant in Sayulita, a small village on Mexico's western coast, and it occupies just 80 m² inside a brick structure that had been left to fall apart. PALMA completed the project in 2018. The clients arrived with an architectural idea already in mind, so the studio's job was less about inventing a concept and more about turning a narrow, damaged shell into a working restaurant.

The interesting decision is where the kitchen goes. In most small restaurants the kitchen hides at the back. Here PALMA put it in the middle of the plan and treated it as a freestanding pavilion of parota wood and wicker. It splits the room into a street-facing front and a quieter rear, it filters air and light, and it puts the cooks in front of the diners. In a space this tight, one built object ends up doing almost all of the organizing.

Starting from a Ruin

The construction photograph explains the project's restraint. Before the work began, the site was a long brick passage under a barrel vault, full of debris, with almost nothing usable except the masonry itself. PALMA kept the brick vaulting as the ceiling, and that choice sets the tone for everything below it.

A herringbone brick floor answers the vault overhead, so the corridor reads as one continuous masonry tube. The new elements sit inside that tube as lighter objects, without trying to cover it up. Walk the narrow passage beside the kitchen and you feel the old structure working: it is heavy and curved, and it stays cool to look at.

A Kitchen Wrapped in Wood and Wicker

The kitchen begins as low plastered masonry walls. Above them rises a post structure of double parota columns, lifted slightly off the masonry and fixed with steel anchors. That small gap matters. The timber never appears to grow out of the wall; it rests on it, so you can tell new from old at a glance.

Wicker panels fill the frame. They let air and light through while still marking the edge of the kitchen. From the dining room, the cooks look as though they are working inside a screened market stall, half seen. We think this is the project's best move, because the screen makes the kitchen easy to see into while keeping it distinct from the dining room. The watermelons on the steel counter look casual, and they are on display for a reason.

The Bar as Backdrop

At the front of house, the bar closes off the view. Its curved timber top sits on an orange tile base, and behind it a wood and rattan shelf holds the bottles. The bar repeats the kitchen's materials at a smaller scale, so the front dining area seems to share a single palette with the center of the plan.

Brick steps rise beside the bar toward the dining level, which tells you the floor follows the site's slope and is not perfectly flat. PALMA uses that level change to separate drinking from eating without adding a single partition.

Green Banquettes and Borrowed Depth

Green tiled banquettes with arched backs run along the long wall, and mirrored panels above them double the room's apparent width. A narrow room calls for this kind of trick, and here the arches echo the vault overhead, so the effect does not feel cheap. The curve repeats in the ceiling, the seat backs and the bar, and that repetition holds the interior together.

The color choice is careful. Green tile, orange tile, brick red and honey timber could easily turn into a theme restaurant. They hold back because each color sits on a different element and none of them is decoration applied for its own sake.

Copper, Bamboo and the Rear Patio at Night

Lighting comes from stained bamboo pendants and copper fixtures. The sconces throw fans of warm light across the plaster, and the tall woven pendants hang low over the tables. After dark, the copper tabletops and fixtures pick up that glow, and the vault fades into a warm background.

At the back, past the kitchen, the restaurant opens to a small patio. A combined bench and planter seats larger groups and brings planting into the plan, and string lights hang above it. This rear area is more intimate than the street front, and you reach it by walking past the cooks, which turns going to your table into a short tour of the kitchen.

Plans and Drawings

The floor plan makes the strategy plain: a long thin strip with the kitchen counter set in the middle, tables at both ends and the planted terrace closing the far end. The sections show the floor stepping with the site, the diagonal stair, the run of arched booths and the round openings along the wall.

The two axonometric views isolate the kitchen pavilion: a slender post frame with infill panels standing on a solid base, drawn from opposite sides. These drawings show how little structure the screen needs, and they confirm that the masonry base and the light frame were designed as two separate systems.

Why This Project Matters

Achara shows how far one well-placed object can carry a small interior. PALMA did not partition the narrow shell or spread interventions along its length. The studio concentrated the effort in a single kitchen pavilion and let it handle circulation, zoning, ventilation and atmosphere together. For anyone working on tight hospitality projects inside old buildings, it is a useful precedent.

The project also handles reuse honestly. The vault stays as it is, the timber is held visibly off the masonry, and the regional materials (parota, wicker, bamboo, clay, copper) are chosen because they suit the climate and the place, not as nostalgic references. As a result, a Thai restaurant in a Mexican beach town feels grounded in its location rather than imported.

Achara Restaurant by PALMA. Location: Sayulita, Mexico. Area: 80 m². Year: 2018. Photography: Luis Young.

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