ASSEMBLY CHEF’S HALL PATIO BAR
1963 Airstream Safari
Even before Assembly Chef’s Hall, a 17-vendor food hall in the Financial District, had any fixtures or furniture, owner Andreas Antoniou had already acquired a 1963 Airstream Safari trailer from a private collection in Muskoka with the intention of refurbishing it as the hall’s patio bar.
Antoniou recruited the Concord, Ont.based fabrication firm Defined Designs to restore the trailer. Creative director Dwayne Virag was at the helm of the project. The trailer’s exterior was already polished and in excellent condition, but the interior needed to be stripped, the subfloor replaced and key welding points in the steel frame reinforced. This required the body to be separated and lifted up off the frame. “We wanted to make sure it was up to code and strong enough considering all the weight and equipment that was going to go into it,” Virag says.
After structural needs were met, Virag’s team began the trailer’s transformation into a bar. The front section became a walk-in fridge to house the draft and soda systems. The lines run through holes cut in the frame and insulation to reach taps at the opposite end. When it came to cutting a functioning service door into the side of the Airstream — something that might take a day on a normal trailer — it took Virag’s team a week to execute it because of the Airstream’s iconic but inconsistent curves. The trailer, which is parked on Assembly’s patio, began operating as a bar in June, but Virag attests that once detached from electricity and water hookups, it’s still fully mobile.