Parisian oyster bar creates impression of "diving into an aquarium"

Citrons et Huîtres oyster bar creates impression of "diving into an aquarium"

French interior designer Marion Mailaender has completed a seafood bar in Paris named Citrons et Huîtres, which features oyster-shaped door handles and a stainless steel counter informed by fishmongers.

Mailaender, who specialises in creating spaces "with a great sense of humour", designed the bar to resemble an elevated market stall, where guests can dine inside or take away platters of oysters and shellfish.

Citrons et Huîtres features a stainless steel centre with coral-coloured stools — Citrons et Huîtres is an oyster bar with coral-coloured stools

Citrons et Huîtres has a raw steel facade informed by the storefronts of local fishmongers, which have floor-to-ceiling windows that open onto the streets of Paris.

Guests enter the bar through a door with a bronze handle shaped like an oyster shell, while a matching neon sign is fixed on the facade above the bar's name.

Citrons et Huîtres's door, featuring door handles shaped like oysters — The bar has door handles shaped like oyster shells

Inside, the space has a vaulted ceiling that reaches more than four and a half metres in height, which is painted blue together with the walls to create the impression of "diving into an amazing aquarium", the owners said.

The walls are decorated with prints by Mailaender's husband, the artist Thomas Mailaender, who used a cyanotype printing process dating back to 1842 to produce ethereal blue photographs of coastal scenes.

Outside a Parisian oyster bar, featuring a oyster-shaped neon sign — An oyster-shaped neon sign decorates the facade

Countertops are rendered in stainless steel and finished with a "pearly sheen", while coral-coloured stools line the bar.

The bar serves local French oysters from Brittany, presented on stainless steel trays that complement the interior.

"Like a market stall with its stainless steel seafood counter, Citrons et Huîtres invites guests to savour the most incredible oysters while sipping on a glass of white," the bar's owners explained.

Citrons et Huîtres features a stainless steel centre with coral-coloured stools and blue walls — Walls and ceilings are painted in a moody shade of blue

The name Citrons et Huîtres was chosen to reference a still-life by French Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who once had his studio in the same building that now houses the oyster bar.

"At the height of his glory in 1900, Renoir created Citrons et Huîtres, a piece of art that celebrates the most beautiful shellfish, classified as a national heritage of French art," said the owners.

Close-up photograph of oyster basket resting on coral-coloured stool — The bar serves local French oysters and mussels from Brittany

Other oyster bars with interiors informed by the food on offer include Vancouver's ShuckShuck, which is traversed by a curving concrete counter, and Watchman's in Atlanta with its "spare nautical" interiors.

The photography is by Thomas Tissandier.