PIG & TIGER

Pig & Tiger is a Taiwanese restaurant in the Five Points neighborhood of Denver, Colorado. It got its start in the food hall at Avanti F&B in Boulder before moving into its own space. The building was once a mechanics shop. It went through a series of restaurants after that, and today it's home to one of Denver's top restaurants. Pig & Tiger earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand in the 2026 Colorado guide.

This project was a challenge because we were taking over a very industrial space, and the clients wanted to marry a sultry opium lounge with a back alley street food vendor.

We started at the bar. We covered the bar soffit with wallpapered panels that form a shutter-like awning, the kind you'd see over the food stalls down a Taiwanese alley. Under those awnings we placed caged industrial tube sconces, which balance the ornate red wallpaper with an industrial edge.

The same wallpaper continues onto the columns we added in the dining room. Those columns solved two problems. The plain wood columns needed to be more exciting, and the dining room felt oddly open next to a bar side that was very closed off. We wrapped each wood column in an ornate surround and matched it to the overhead beam. Together they put a cozy cap on the dining room and give diners a stronger sense of place in an otherwise open room.

We're also proud of the murals, inside and out, which we hand painted ourselves. On the outside, we split the logo, half pig face and half tiger face, across the corner of the building. Stand at the corner and you see both the pig and the tiger. Look from one side of the street and you only see one of them. It gives people passing by a reason to stop and play with it. Inside, we split the same logo around a column on the brick wall and underlit the whole wall with LED tape. The dramatic uplight sits under the logo and brings out the brick.