A Polish restaurant that refuses the obvious
When a new restaurant takes the name of a figure as loaded as Baba Yaga, the temptation to lean on folk iconography must be considerable. Sebastian Śliwiński Studio resisted it entirely. The result, at 10 Wronia Street in central Warsaw, is an interior that earns its identity through architectural decision-making rather than costume.
According to whiteMAD, which first reported on the project in September 2026, the client gave the studio an unusually open brief: the name was fixed, the menu would be Polish, and everything else was negotiable. Śliwiński's response was to let the building speak first.
What the space actually looks like
The venue seats 110 guests across three zones, each of which can be closed off with grey curtains that echo the exposed concrete walls. The floor is concrete, the furniture minimal, and almost all decorative weight sits at ceiling level. Three independent plaster compositions, custom-cast and installed by hand by sculptors, crown each zone. Their richness reads as a deliberate counterpoint to the stripped-back surfaces below.
Running just beneath those ceilings is a 43-metre fresco by Grzegorz Worpus-Budziejewski. It tells episodes from the Baba Yaga story, though not in sequence: a merchant's theft, a feast, a gathering, a fox hunt, and a section devoted to clouds from which the witch emerges on her broomstick. The scenes surface as a guest moves through the room rather than unfolding in a single read. A continuous LED line illuminates the painting without breaking it into frames.
The bar as focal point
The bar is conceived as a standalone installation called the Sun. Its radial structure carries display shelves, and arched LED lines trace the circumference of the circle to suggest sunlight. The bar faces west, so that at the end of the afternoon natural light and designed light briefly overlap. It is a small detail, but the kind that rewards guests who happen to be there at the right moment.
Materials and acoustics
Four materials carry the entire interior: concrete flooring, steel at the bar and counter, dark wood on select fittings, and linen-like upholstery. Lighting sources are concealed throughout; Davide Groppi Infinito lamps hang as slender lines above the room, directing LEDs toward the plasterwork so that the stucco itself becomes a diffuser. Spotlights handle the bar and art display separately.
With 110 covers in a single room, acoustics required deliberate attention. The sound system creates what the designers describe as acoustic curtains between tables, reducing conversation carry-over without any visible intervention.
Why it matters for hosts
Independent hospitality operators in Warsaw now have a strong local reference point for how to build a distinctive interior without resorting to theme-park heritage aesthetics. Baba Jaga demonstrates that a clear conceptual brief, a restrained material palette, and investment in one or two genuinely crafted focal elements (the fresco, the stucco, the bar installation) can produce a coherent identity that is harder to date than surface-level stylisation. For operators planning a fit-out or refresh, the approach is worth studying: define what you will not do as carefully as what you will.
Details were first reported by whiteMAD; design and photography are credited to Sebastian Śliwiński Studio.
First reported by whitemad.pl.