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Wharfedale Indulges in a Norwich Culinary Fiesta

Set in the heart of Norwich, Indulge Grill & Bar looks set to revolutionise the city’s culinary and design ethic.

Covering three floors and 3,000sq.ft, the seven-days-a-week operation is the brainchild of Sarah-Jane Roberts, who had been part of the successful management team at My Kinda Town in London before returning to her home town to strike out alone.

Finding a magnificent Georgian Grade II-listed building in Queen Street, which formerly operated as a Hogshead, 12 months and half-a-million pounds later she has opened the unique bar/restaurant.

Aside from the food — which offers a premium selection of grill choices including drunken duck gourmet sausages, Russian-up burgers (topped with caviar) and matured beef — Ms Roberts has enlisted top London interior designers, Satmoko Ball to stamp an individual signature on each of the feature spaces, and given high priority to the audio visual entertainment.

For the latter she contracted Multizone, whose advanced media server (supplied by Blucat Ltd) acts as a matrix for streaming different audio, visual and graphics files around the five-zone venue. Working alongside builders, Discovery Construction, Blucat’s project manager, Jason Lee also invested the venue with a high-quality Wharfedale sound reinforcement system, drawing different components for each of the featured areas.

These include a private corporate hire space in the basement vaults, with full wi-fi access and AV facilities, and a restaurant on the first floor. Sandwiched between at ground level is a large L-shaped space which changes mood from front of house, with its sumptous lounging areas, through a live combo stage midway, and on to the main bar and dancefloor, which operates under a stain-glassed roof light. All floors are equipped with Wharfedale components.

“We are fortunate that the Wharfedale range offers such versatility and value for money,” says Jason.

For his main artillery the installer has used four Wharfedale SI-12’s flown over each corner of the dancefloor, with a pair of Wharfedale Twin 15SXB’s on the floor. The key to the SI series’ success, he believes, is its 44mm Titanium diaphragm compression driver. The DJ booth is industry-spec, containing Denon DN-D4500 twin CD players, Technics SL1210 turntables and an Allen & Heath XOne:92 mixer.

The live plug-in point in the Mid Bar area allows the processing of acoustic jazz and guitar combos, played back through the main dancefloor system, while at the mid bar and front of house bar servery the subliminal soundscape sets the scene via eight of Wharfedale’s popular Programme 50’s.

The main entertainment sources can be patched down to the basement, or alternatively corporate guests can generate their own DJ playback through a pair of Wharfedale SI-10’s, with a Twin 15 SXB adding some real weight to the low frequencies.

High quality restaurant sound is the order of the day up on the first floor, and Jason Lee has ensured high intelligibility and transparency with six evenly distributed Programme 50’s, again using the DSP to optimise the sound.

Lee explains that the venue offers global signal routing, thanks to the two BSS Soundweb Mk2 DSP devices (which offer 16 Mic/Line ins and 16 outs), with local volume override at the bars. “Everything you could want is within these loudspeakers and as long as you have DSP at the end, and the levels for the various trading sessions stored as presets, you can’t go wrong.”

Sarah-Jane Roberts has ensured a vast programme of entertainment, including carefully customer-profiled, revolving playlists delivered by the Multizone hard drive (cool jazz by day and laid-back soul funk after dark). A variety of plasma and 32in LCD screens relay satellite TV channels while a pair of 2500 ANSI lumens BenQ DLP projectors deliver ageing black and white movies directly onto the painted walls to create a beguiling form of moving wallpaper.

Commented Jason Lee: “The client was very precise about what she expected — both in terms of the audio quality and the programming, which they are still fine tuning.”

And the owner herself sums up: “We’re totally crazy about everything we do and the sound system is spot on. All the team have shed blood, sweat and tears to bring this exciting project to Norwich and we want you to join us and feel the enthusiasm.”

photo: Sue Barr

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Wharfedale Indulges in a Norwich Culinary Fiesta

29th September 2006

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