The place to be: “The Paradise Now” is a bar, restaurant, club and bistro all in one.

It's Monday morning, 10 o'clock. The 44-year-old has been in his office on the first floor at Grabbeplatz 2 for two hours. There in the old town, in the triangle formed by the Kunstsammlung NRW, the Kunsthalle and the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, where for many years international art was exhibited in the renowned Galerie Hans Mayer, are the headquarters of the rapidly growing company. El Sheikh's schedule today includes the daily meeting with his closest colleagues, discussions with the architect, a tour of the construction site for a new residential project in Flingern, family time with his daughter from 2 p.m. onwards – but before that, a conversation with VIVID about art and pubs, places of longing and home, about motivation and mobility.

Expansion and no end in sight. In the past six years you have realised and orchestrated five new pubs that are stylistically sophisticated down to the smallest detail. What drives you to always dare something new?

It's the idea of creating your own worlds with artistic ambition, where people meet, where emotions are released, where guests can immerse themselves in a special atmosphere and experience sensuality. More than 20 years ago I worked in the Anaconda Lounge parallel to my studies at the Folkwang University in Essen. It was then that I realised that the design of a space plays a decisive role in the quality of the encounter. Each of our projects is about questions: How can I touch the guest visually and emotionally in this place? What light, what look, what feel would suit? We then design the playing field, create a local identity, create something unmistakable. The added spice is the ambience, the music, the projections and the guests who change every evening and thus influence the mood.

As different as the venues are – what they all have in common is that they are mostly in the old town and rather atypical there.

Yes, that is indeed very important to me. For example, after NewYear's Eve 2015/2016, when there were sexual assaults in Cologne and other places, women didn't go out alone without a male companion for months afterwards. With the Elephant Bar, I wanted to make a public statement and create a reason to go to the old town, not just for women, but for a discerning audience. Since then, we have been culturally changing local life and shaping the culture of going out. Because of the Elephant Bar together with the Kürzer brewery, the Bar Cherie and the legendary Knoten, Kurze Straße has undergone an incredible transformation. Young Düsseldorfers have reclaimed a piece of the old town. Take the new wine bar. Many warned us that such a concept would not work in the old town. But the opposite is the case – it works. I see us as pioneers, paving a way for people who have a greater interest than just boozing and bawling loudly on the way there. We bring a greater social mix to a place that is supposedly stigmatised.

Supposedly?

Yes. If you put the numbers into perspective, with the large number of guests every evening, the number of fights is rather low. The image that the old town has does not correspond with reality. What is striking, however, is the asymmetry in reporting: as soon as problems arise, they are reported excessively in the media. However, when a new exciting location opens, it is often only a side note. The positive remains unmentioned. I don't deny that there are difficult locations – like at the Rheinufer-Promenade. There, the hurdle for rioters is very low, there is no societal monitoring authority, a vacuum is quickly created that tends to fill negatively. A completely different picture emerges when cultural events such as Japan Day, Jazz Rally or France Festival attract people.

You have a soft spot for beauty, for art, culture and architecture. What or who inspires you to keep designing new venues?

Conceptually, we are constantly evolving, each new project financed by our own funds is created as a spin-off from the existing ones. In 2016, the former Q-Stall became the Elephant Bar. Until then, there was no classic American bar in the old town with an ambience in the style of the 60s with lots of wood, marble and leather, plus super-good drinks and old school hip-hop music. After the small living room in the nightlife district, the gateway to the big wide world emerged shortly afterwards. Against all odds and prophecies of doom, we opened Sir Walter on Heinrich-Heine-Allee. It turned all the rules (location, size, etc.) of gastronomy upside down and its enormous dimensions alone radiate cosmopolitanism. For the first time we caused a national sensation and to this day people are queuing to get in. We continued with the Anaconda Lounge, which I completely remodelled into Oh Baby Anna and handed over in 2022. With the Boston Bar, Düsseldorf's first sports bar opened in summer 2020. The jewel in the crown – launched in the middle of the pandemic – is the globally acclaimed Paradise Now – a triad of restaurant, bar and club.

Your concepts are elaborate and escapist. You speak of places of longing. What does that mean?

At Paradise Now we cater to the longing for faraway places and warmth, for supple material and flattering light; here you can escape from everyday life without going on a journey. The place is photogenic, the pictures taken there have triggered an unimagined hype, they flood social media, achieve enormous reach, become a topic of conversation, arouse curiosity. Paradise Now is the benchmark that is being imitated in New York, Paris and London. The Fett wine bar offers a different kind of gastronomic experience. Untreated wooden tables, chairs that also hang as removable decorative elements on the imperfect, raw walls, candlelight, the green-tiled bar in the centre, plus video installations and romantic music – this awakens a longing for freedom back home. I'm more or less at home there, I can let myself go in the middle of the old town – no entrance fee, no reservations, no culinary delights, but wine, a beer, a water, a long drink and various friendly, smiling staff. You can't drink or eat the experience, it's the space that creates identification.

“It is a matter of concern to me and I really enjoy making a difference here”

Your home is Düsseldorf. Have you never been drawn to go somewhere else?

Before my studies, yes, but I lacked the courage to pull up all my tents. My large family lives here, some siblings work in the company. Düsseldorf is my home and the perfect platform to experience art, to enjoy it. It is a matter of concern to me and I really enjoy making a difference here, helping to shape local life and urban development with my own projects and also as an advisor.

The latest buzz word: mobility. The city centre is full of construction sites, parking spaces are being eliminated, traffic routes are changing, roads are turning into cycle lanes – how much does the mobility shift affect your businesses, for example delivery traffic?

Very much. If I were allowed to solve the problem, I would keep traffic from elsewhere out of the city – with the result that the existing infrastructure would work, the flow of traffic would not grind to a halt. Why don't we learn from cities like Florence or Venice or Roermond. There, visitors are automatically “parked” in areas outside and brought into the centre by bus. Everyone who lives or works in the city centre can thus move around without traffic jams or a long search for a parking space. On the Kö, for example, I would keep the parking spaces facing the moat and set up delivery zones for taxis or suppliers opposite.

Do you have plans for further hospitality venues?

We are currently looking at two spaces in inner-city districts. A nationwide expansion is also conceivable. But nothing is yet decided, it's all up in the air. •

Interview Dagmar Haas-Pilwat
Pictures Paradise Now

“It´s the space that creates identification”