The intimate dining experience of Bar Centrale is tightly carved out between a robust, long wine bar and a folding glass convertible storefront, much like a compact train car pulled up to a station platform. Along the platform, one is surrounded by elements that evoke nostalgia for train stations of the past; the abstracted wood train car behind the bar carrying refrigerators of wine and deli goods, and the re-imagined ‘box car’ transporting wine along two steel rails held above the stair.

Striated reclaimed wood flooring of Queens Warf Hemlock salvaged from the historic Bathurst Street pier, sets the platform for the train car of elevated banquettes complete with overhead luggage racks. Blackened steel plates are inserted here in the herringbone-patterned wood floor and suggest a sudden shift of seemingly fixed objects along the would-be platform. The ‘departure board’ is re-conceptualized and reinstated as two prominent elements within the space. A flap board by Small Design is located above the doors leading to the exterior patio and features the new arrivals of the wine bar. The feature ceiling composed of rotating, triangulated ceiling panels flips independently like a destinations flip board that turns to set the mood over the course of the day.

Each face of the triangular sections is treated with one of four colours or white oak and can be rotated individually so that together and apart, they transform the spirit of the room as they change along the length of the space. The heavy zinc top of the CNC sculpted marble bar is now scaled for comfortable eating from early morning to late night. Entering the bar from the west end of the long, linear space, one gets the sense of being on a binario or train platform that plays on the emotional anticipation of departing or arriving.