Amid the buzz and fab food at last week’s opening of Barbican hot spot Isiaa’s, we were drawn to the eatery’s charming aesthetics. Spacious with a modern contemporary feel, Isiaa’s held us captive, with its understated tropical design concept. Catching up with Evan Williams, the restaurant’s architect, Thursday Food discovered that co-proprietors Lisa McMaster and hubby Clifford Phipps had originally intended to name the restaurant Coal Stove and feature a menu of entirely local foods such as oxtail and beans, ackee and saltfish, cowfoot and beans. While the restaurant would undergo a name change (after the owners’ two-year-old daughter) and the menu expanded beyond local-inspired offerings, the idea for a characteristically Caribbean look remained.

“The thought conceptually from our meeting months ago was to incorporate local flourishes,” Williams said. Little wonder, then, that the finished Isiaa’s features “cut stone from Trelawny, walls applied with wicker that is all locally woven, hand-made metal hanging fixtures from Marzouca, countertops made of local cedar, locally made concrete flooring in green and gold, and a thatch roofing on the balcony for a country Jamaican look.” Pleased as we are with the support given to local tradesmen and suppliers, we’re even more impressed that Williams took a mere 12 weeks to transform what was a nondescript building into a restaurant that elegantly whispers style. The architect, who has known the eatery’s owners for some time as he was commissioned to design their Norbrook home in 2007, is happy his work is rubber-stamped with a nod to the tropics. “The whole Barbican area is in transition and becoming gentrified,” Williams told Thursday Food. “The surrounding buildings have a very modern-esque tradition and I didn’t want to lose the localness of the square.”

“I decided to make something with a local touch so when the area is transformed with sidewalk cafés and the renaissance of Barbican Square takes root, this will serve as a local element, Isiaa’s is an emotional response for me,” Williams added.

Next up for the highly regarded architect, who has designed many Sandals and Superclubs hotels, is his job as chief designer for the Hope Zoo reconstruction being spearheaded by the Guardsman Group. “We’re designing it to be more user-friendly. We are redesigning all the exhibit enclosures, the savannah, the lawns…it will be open at nights, and have a restaurant, and a place where people can get married,” he disclosed.