Underground Mr. Zoogunzoo has an interior to match its singular name. The walls are daubed with adobe designs, as if decorated by aboriginal dot artists. Light diffuses from opaque lamp shades resembling irregular crystals or the seed pods of an alien life form.
At the far end of the room, a half-moon door leads into a further chamber, set aside for small larger parties. The Balinese wooden furniture is simple and reassuringly solid. Even the refrigerators have been covered in washi paper in deep earth hues to soften their insistent presence. This otherworldly Aladdin's cave whispers not of money or design but of tales of mythology and imagination.
Owner-manager Eiji Suzuki and his friendly young team were, until last year, the people running Uluru 125, the cult little Aussie wine bar set in a funky old Japanese house in backstreet Harajuku. Their raison d'e^tre at Mr. Z (as we're sure it will come to be known, at least among the foreign community) remains unchanged, albeit filtered through several layers of refinement and creativity.