Mandarin Oriental Muscat
We’re soon ready to welcome you to our second location in Oman. Here, you’ll find our seasonal coffees and our baked goods to be enjoyed in the warm and welcoming space or to take home.
La Cabra Mandarin Oriental
Mandarin Oriental Hotel Shop no. 004
Way 2827, Shatti al Qurum
113 Muscat
Oman
Opening Hours
To be announced
La Cabra in Oman
This is our second location in Oman. We’ve been working here for some time, educating ourselves on both the existing appetite for quality, and on the rich history and culture of this beautiful country.
We reflect these learnings in our offering, working together with our existing team to use local spices and ingredients in our bakery, and create unique coffee servings in the café. Being able to contribute to and shape this relatively new coffee culture is one of our main motivations in opening here, alongside sharing our approach to Nordic baking.
Mandarin Oriental
You find our second location in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, where we’ve created a modern café while reflecting Omani design traditions in our choice of materials and architectural approach.
Mandarin Oriental is our homage to Oman, inspired by our journeys inland and a deepening appreciation for the depth of Omani culture and tradition.
Two experiences had a great effect on the direction of this project. The first was a visit to the Nizwa fort back in 2022, a 2 hour drive inland from Muscat. Here, the contrast is stark. Away from the ocean, and away from modern Oman, the ancient culture and traditions of these lands is on full view. One can discover a myriad of Omani features and motifs when peeling away the layers of this labyrinthine structure, a great source of inspiration for the project in the Mandarin Oriental. The other was a trip to a marble manufacturer outside Muscat, where we witnessed the extraction of stone from the sand. The beauty of this material was striking. The many layers were an illustration of the time spent in the harsh and challenging landscape, a snapshot of the natural history of this specific spot. The forthright and honest Nizwa Fort, and the raw yet warm feel of the sandstone became the two main references for the project, a mantra on which all other elements were built.
At our Mandarin Oriental location, one enters an open space directly from the waterfront, full of warmth and natural materials like traditional Omani Sarooj paint and Danish ‘Søuld’ acoustic panels, manufactured from seaweed. The space has a dropped ceiling further back, creating a contrast between the open and bustling bar area, with its focus on ordering, retail and takeaway, and the softer and warmer cafe seating area.
This contrast is supported by the lighting of the space. The bar area is light and airy, with the bar’s form underlined by lamps designed collaboratively with our friend Long Fei of Toseibo. Inspired by traditional Omani work in terracotta, brought into our clay universe by Long Fei. The soft lighting in the seating area reflects the purpose of this space; slowing down and focussing on coffee and bakery experiences.
In the seating area, both modern and classic Danish design traditions are reflected, with simple folding chairs by Frama and the safari chair masterpiece by Kaare Klint. The oak used here reflects our first project in Oman, the Al Qurum bakery, creating a thread between the two locations; at the Mandarin Oriental the oak is smoked in order to create a contrast with the beige sandstone and Sarooj universe.
Following on from Al Qurum, we once again reflect the rhythmic arches of the traditional Arabic architecture in the structure of the space, with repeating pillars supporting a bulkhead into which the air conditioning outlets were built, concealing the services and maintaining the simple expression of the space. Free standing elements, such as the retail podium and the water station block, are designed so that they could almost be carved straight from the quarry.
