rasa restaurant farm to table dining

Rasa Restaurant Design Inspiration

Ervin Architecture continues to add consequential and original design projects to the Maine culinary landscape with Rasa Restaurant, an Indian restaurant in the heart of Bangor’s revitalized downtown.

Rasa is a space of subtlety and sophistication, where woven textures, contemporary forms, and striking material selections create an ambience of elegance and ease that is authentically Indian.

Finding the Space

Rob Ervin of Ervin Architecture, along with restaurateur Sai Reddy of Taj in South Portland, found the space after several other locations around Bangor fell short. It occupies the prow of a brick-veneer building put up for the Maliseet in the 1980s, overlooking Exchange Street.

What the Gut Renovation Had to Solve

For decades it served as office space — designed for cubicles and coffee, and built accordingly: undersized electrical service, inadequate water and sewer, and a labyrinth of winding hallways framed by shoddy partitions. A gut renovation was the only way forward. But the location sat in Bangor’s walkable downtown with adequate off-street parking, and the dining room came with 180 degrees of wraparound glass. The cost to convert was outweighed by the operational upside.

An office building converted to a restaurant has to be rebuilt from the services up. A full Indian kitchen runs a clay oven for naan alongside the standard line, and none of the electrical, water or sewer service that ran cubicles and a coffee maker was adequate for it. New service had to be brought in, waste had to be re-run, and the hood and make-up air had to be routed through a building that was never designed to carry them. The gut renovation was not an aesthetic decision. It was the only way to get a working kitchen into the shell.

Designing Around a Daily Lunch Buffet

Rasa runs a lunch buffet seven days a week from eleven to two, and that puts a requirement on the plan that most restaurants never have. The buffet needs its own footprint, its own power and its own place in the room — close enough to the kitchen to be restocked without crossing the dining room, far enough from the entry that the line doesn’t back into the door, and positioned so guests can circle it in one direction. Then the same room has to become a full-service dining room at four o’clock without looking like it has a buffet parked in the middle of it.

One Room, Two Characters

Rasa opened in spring 2026 to a strong reception. The design does two jobs at once. By day, bright textures and full southern light suit the lunch buffet crowd. At night the lights come down and the room changes character entirely — one of downtown Bangor’s better date-night rooms.