The Ultimate Guide to Every Restaurant Chair in Lahore - Part 1

I sat my butt in every restaurant seat so you don't have to. Here's a review of them all.

What’s this?

A review of every restaurant chair I’ve sat in over the past year.

Why?

I enjoy a good chair. I don’t particularly enjoy food.

Why should you be trusted?

I’ve studied the ergonomics of chairs, watched a documentary on chairs, read a book on chairs, and (poorly) designed my own chair.
Also there aren’t any other chair reviews on the market, so you’re stuck with my opinion.

This is…Part 1?

Yup. Part 2 will follow next week, and then Part 3, and 4, and 5.
Subscribe for future editions.

Update: Part 2 is here.

Grab a seat. Here we go.

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1. Yum

This chair starts off with much promise.

Nice, wide base. Tall back. The gentle curve offering a modicum of lower back support. Adequate cushioning.

All ingredients for a very good chair.

But the big issue with this chair isn’t the chair itself, it’s the pairing of this chair with the table it’s placed in front of.

The central support for the table means there’s no leg room.

If you come within eating distance of the table, your knees collide with the table; and if you move back to stretch your legs, your arms are too far away from the plate.

So you end up having to push your toes against the table the entire time, with your heels raised.

And the base isn’t quite long enough, so there’s no support for your lower thighs. The four people at our table, all of varying heights, all complained about their strained legs by the end of the hour.

Score: 4/10

2. Sumo

This chair has a really nice feel to it, and I’d expect it to, considering Sumo’s eye-watering prices. But going with a cream-colored chair is risky business, and as you can see, it hasn’t really stood up to the stains and wear and tear.

I’m happy with the lean and curve of the back, and the cushioning is decent too. But the raised sides of the base restricts lateral leg movement.

This chair has lots going for it, but I think it falls short in one major way: it’s slightly too short.

For someone of my height, this means most of the weight distribution is through my feet, rather than my butt. And that means that it quickly gets tiring. And that’s not great news for a fine-dining establishment where you probably want people to stay just a little longer to order dessert.

Oh, and the small tables mean that the leg room of the chair is also compromised for a larger party.

Score: 6/10

3. Rina’s Kitchenette

The armrest-to-table height ratio is great - just about in line with how you’d expect to place your hands on the table.

The cushioning is commendable: most restaurants just leave their wooden chairs as-is. Not only is there a cushion, it’s also soft and wide enough to accommodate larger people.

But for all the marks it gains for the base, it loses a significant chunk for the horrible back support. You can see why: it’s a curved piece of wood. And a curved piece of wood is decidedly not very comfortable.

And of course, there’s no actual lower back support. Just gaps in between the wood.

This chair is good for butt, bad for back.

Score: 5/10

4. Amu

A really nice-looking chair.

But while pleasing to the eye, the curved back does hug your shoulders in, restricting upper body movement. I found myself constantly adjusting my arms: either tucked in against my body to accommodate the curve, or extended outwards but then just dangling down without any arm support.

The cushioning is also a little shallow - and I say this as someone who isn’t particularly heavy.

Overall, this chair is definitely not for the bigger-than-average person.

I also tried the wicker chair alternative, which was marginally better at addressing my complaints. But the cushion at the back, while a thoughtful touch, had the opposite effect of restricting butt space, and had me leaning forwards rather than back.

Score: 6.5/10

5. Noon Bistro

Dear reader,

Do you hate your spine? If so, you’re in luck because Noon have got just the chairs for you.

It’s a classic example of great UI and awful UX.

Because the chair certainly looks nice. Interesting and quirky.

But back support? We don’t do that here.

Here’s a flimsy piece of plastic across the top to masquerade as a back rest, and then, for good measure, let’s throw in a gaping hole below it too. Perfect for your spine to protrude through the chair and out the other side.

And the arm rest is useless because it’s a pair of sharp, pointy pieces of plastic that cut into your forearms.

And to cap things off, the chair is too low (for my height), so your thighs start feeling the strain because your legs aren’t at 90 degrees from the chair base.

For a (very) expensive establishment, these cheap plastic chairs are the worst I’ve seen.

Score: 1/10

Update: I went back a few months later, and they’d changed the seats.

To something even worse.

I have no words.

Updated score: 0/10

6. Dan Dan

From what is an increasingly sorry state of affairs for restaurant chairs, this bad boy is the best one I’ve come across so far.

The base is wide enough to seat people of most sizes, and the back support is excellent, because it’s a cushion. Would you look at that. An actual cushion.

The cushion being taller than the back support means you can recline on it, since the cushion simply bends over to accommodate the recline:

This is excellent, because it lets the user decide how much recline they want, if any.

It’s also the perfect table-to-chair height, and perhaps miraculously, the sofa seating is the same height as the chairs - so I’m not towering over my friends:

The construction is also light enough to easily move the chair around - an oft-overlooked consideration when people are seated close together and need to move.

I’ll cut a mark for the lack of decent arm support, which is a shame because this could very easily have been achieved by adding just a little bit more padding.

I also found a fabric version of this chair at Baranh, although it wasn’t quite as nice:

Score: 9/10

7. Subway

This is a great chair for if you like torturing yourself, and it achieves that effect very quickly.

The cold metal back support is ideal for providing zero comfort, and if you’re brave enough to lean back, the sharp top edge will do a splendid job of cutting into your shoulders.

I also have no room to place my feet on the floor, because the table feet are in the way. So I end up having to place my feet on top of the table’s feet, which means extra strain on my ankles.

This chair is only tolerable for about 10 minutes, which I suppose is the maximum amount of time one should be sitting at Subway anyway.

Score: 2.5/10

8. Pasta la Vista

This small, unassuming chair is deceptively good.

You would think that the relatively straight-looking back wouldn’t offer much recline, but surprisingly it does a very good job of providing just enough flexibility to lean back.

That said, the upper back is rough and plasticy, which does take away from the comfort of the back support.

And the arm support is halfway between existing and not existing (see: my friend using and not using it in the photo above).

Overall it has a very nice feel to it, although the material is questionable for the wear-and-tear of restaurant use.

Score: 7.5/10

9. Coffee Planet

The cushioning on these chairs is really really good. It’s soft, but not so soft that you sink into the chair.

The back is too straight though, almost at 90 degrees; which is not ideal for a coffee spot where you want to sit back and relax.

This is strictly a No Leaning Allowed situation.

The armrest-to-table height ratio is found wanting: the arms are several inches taller than the table, and this isn’t a problem if you’re just having coffee, but order something to eat and your elbows start awkwardly jutting out to the sides.

Ironically, the sofas at the back are a Too Much Leaning Allowed scenario: the seat base is so wide, and the backrest set so far back, that it’s difficult to have a face-to-face conversation being three meters apart.

Score: 7/10

10. Johnny & Jugnu

JJ have two options for seating: an innovative bring-your-own-chair system, or an on-site outdoor seating area.

In the bring-your-own-chair system, I had one of the best chairs I’ve ever experienced while dining out:

This chair has a 6-way adjustment system with options to move the chair back and forth, up and down, and tilting the recline. There’s adequate lumbar support (some models of this chair even have 4-way lumbar adjustment), the head rest is a nice touch. There’s even an arm rest, although it’s a bit strange that it’s only provided on one side. Leg room isn’t the most adequate, but can be adjusted to be somewhat tolerable.

Eagle-eyed readers may have observed the lack of a table, which under normal circumstances would be very concerning. But since this is a chair review and not a table review, I can’t dock points for that.

Your experience will vary depending on which chair you show up with. But a very solid chair in my case, comfortable for several hours at a time.

Score: 10/10

The outdoor seating provided by JJ is pretty subpar:

There’s no cushioning.

There’s no back support.

There’s no arm support.

The seat base is too low to be comfortable on the knees.

This would be a 0/10 experience, but I gave it half a mark for the generous amount of leg room. Better than what Yum has to offer.

Score: 0.5/10

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Research notes

• Chair comfort is highly dependent on body type. For reference, I’m male, 5ft 10in (178cm), and 70kg (155lbs). In my testing I’ve found that some of the most uncomfortable chairs for me were okay for my female friends.

• For restaurants with multiple types of seating, I picked either the most common type of chair, or the most notable chair.

• I excluded sofa booths from my research as these are universally bad.

• I factored in comfort for the average duration of a restaurant visit. The duration is commensurate with the type of restaurant: an hour for fancy places, and 20-odd minutes for fast food.

• In most cases, I avoided rotating between multiple types of seating to gain an accurate experience of sitting in one chair for the full duration of the meal.

• I excluded restaurant-specific factors from my analysis (stackability, affordability, modularity) as I’m going in with a customer-first approach

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Coming up next week:
Part 2 is here:

• Butt Karahi

• KFC

• Nando’s

• Loafology

• Ministry of Burgers

• Tuscany Courtyard

• Eggspectation

• Cosa Nostra

• & your suggestions (let me know if you found a notable chair)

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