South Palms Resort

A collection of four oceanside bars & restaurants, and a culinary market hall
South Palms Resort, Bohol, Philippines — an Accor Hotels MGallery collection hotel
Opening 2025

South Palms is a family owned luxury resort established over twenty years ago on a quiet stretch of white sand beach in southern Bohol. In parallel with the growth of the island as a destination for diving, culinary and eco-tourism, the resort is expanding in size and program, adding villas, new F&B and events areas, a rich interactive landscape with elements of conservation, and a working farm nearby where guests experience regional history, nature and culture.

Atelier Pond is developing the concept, planning, and detailed design for the four restaurants and bars on site, comprising an array of distinct F&B experiences for guests and local residents. As part of a second stage, we are also planning an open air market hall showcasing local chefs, purveyors and artists.

Bohol food is Bohol culture

Bohol is part of the archipelago known as the Visayas, in the southeastern Philippines. The island’s food, industry, lore, and landscape all shaped the designs and experiences at the new South Palms. Here food culture is inextricably woven into every part of Boholano life. Much like the neighborhood of our own Bangkok studio, the waterfront bars, market cafes, food stalls and home style restaurants are an expressway to interaction with local business owners, and a friendly introduction to local ingredients and traditions. We ate and drank our way through Cebu and Bohol with our clients and colleagues, and this contextual research influenced the way we planned the F&B experiences.

The resort’s extended family of businesses includes a vast fishing and aquaculture enterprise, and in an effort to understand how locals and chefs interact with regional purveyors, we paid a visit to the nearby Tagbilaran Central Market. The mix of dining and shopping inside was a reminder of the bounty of fresh local food from land and sea. We wanted our resort guests to appreciate this richness, so we outfitted our main restaurant, the Kantina, like a multi-vendor market with a fruit seller, a fish monger, a halo halo stall, and a bbq stand.

*At the resort’s main restaurant the food counters are broken into a series of stalls, just like local market hall vendors*

Design decisions like these helped us to formalize an important idea—something we’ve known intuitively for years but a concept that gained more significance for future work after we saw it play out in South Palms:

A dining experience that works within local traditions brings a strong sense of unique place to a venue— this part we knew well. But more than that, being true to the culture with the details of design and service prepares guests for a more rich self-guided culinary adventure once they step out into the world beyond the resort.

In other words, a venue works as an interpretive guide to local food and culture, so that on some other day, as guests ride through the countryside on their own, they feel at home pulling off the road to enjoy the food they’ve just learned about back in the more choreographed setting of the resort. And isn’t this be best form of hospitality—where the work of hosting guests takes them beyond the venue? More than just the “sense of place”, that is real life in THE REAL PLACE.

The design, in four dialects

Of course this interpretive potential is never more important than the essential pleasures of eating and drinking together in thoughtful surroundings, and our venues are meant to offer variety, flexibility, spontaneity, so that these spaces can find their own way forward with whatever unfolds in the life of the resort and the community. To help this natural evolution we brought visual details to reinforce the distinctions between venues… their cuisine, dining format, engagement by guests and neighbors.

Beyond the Kantina, all four of our outlets hit very different notes with their styling, design traditions, materials, graphics and furniture.

Alongside the sun loungers and swing chairs at the pool’s edge is an ode to Palm Springs modernism, our cafe and grill, rendered in exposed steel beams, concrete breeze blocks, hand glazed tiles, and outfitted with custom furnishings like upcycled plastic composites from innovative Cebu manufacturer Nature’s Legacy.

*part of an early concept for the poolside cafe*

Our vision of fine dining was shaped by a visit to a nearby artist’s house, in classic Boholano Spanish Colonial style, a traditional Bahay Kubo home, built and expanded over time, with design flourishes in the wood screens, metal grills, balustrades, everything infused with a sense of artifact, whether a genuine antique or a homemade ceramic knick-knack. We imagined our old/new house on the waterfront as a pre-existing structure, and with the help of the South Palms operations and architectural teams one that will actually be fabricated with reclaimed pieces of salvaged homes from around Bohol.

*Our Potting Shed rum bar at the new/old Filipino house, with its capiz shell windows*

Most rugged and most romantic among our venues, planted lightly in the sand next to the lapping waves, is our modern take on a classic Tiki beach bar. With a working title in homage to a favorite literary character who adventures in the farthest corners of the Philippines, Enoch’s is a departure from any conventional resort experience. Here one can reconnect with the elements in a literal sense—the venue is partially sunken into the beach—and through a celebration of Visayan folklore as well. With its daily sunset drinks and drumming ritual, our beach bar inaugurates each evening’s festivities with a ceremony honoring the mythic Engkanto, the Sirena of the Visayas. [Images of Enoch’s in the image reel above]

Meeting the makers

As much as the food and folklore led us through our design process at South Palms, the regional furniture, materials and home goods industries are of equally unique richness and character. The next island, Cebu, is a world capital of woven furniture-making and has held this position globally even as materials have shifted away from natural wood and fiber to more long-lasting commercial composites. Visiting these factories large and small was a critical first step in the design of our furniture pieces. Understanding the materials and capabilities of these shops in depth led us to produce a collection of custom furniture that emerged organically from the project team dialogue, and which is optimized in its environmental impact.

Local roots holding strong

South Palms as an organization stands out in their commitment to preserving the environment and the people who sustain their resort. Their dedication to community and sustainability was on display as we watched the resort owners and their staff respond with creativity and ingenuity during the harshest periods of the pandemic. South Palms made good on a plan for developing their South Farms project ahead of schedule, using the resort team to plan and execute the creation of this working landscape and events center. With the farm complete and operating, guests to the resort have a new world of activities and community engagement to enjoy. The farm is a place for understanding local agriculture, harvesting crops and making food from the harvest, communing with animals, practicing local crafts, or just enjoying a home cooked farm-to-table meal.

*A real potting shed at South Farms, country cousin to our future rum bar at the resort*

The creation of the farm also paved the way for vital connections to artisans from the surrounding neighborhoods, craftspeople who will contribute to the making of our resort venues and whose abilities we appreciate in detail now that they have already engaged with the owners’ team on the South Farms site.

Project status

South Palms construction is well underway, with a model room completed, and the site works in progress. We were happy to discover during recent visits to the site that efforts had been made during initial groundwork preserve a giant rubber tree that sits just outside of our Old Filipino House restaurant. Construction is well underway, heading for opening in Q1 of 2025

BluPrint, the leading design journal of the Philippines, covers the resort launch in March 2023