Feasts For The Eyes
New York’s Chanterelle restaurant is now closed. Over the course of its 30-year history, owners Karen and David Waltuck commissioned artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Louise Nevelson, Robert Rauschenberg and Cindy Sherman to create artwork for its menu covers. Each new version was displayed in their Harrison Street window and, in the simplest way, offered a tiny and free slice of the Chanterelle experience to anyone who happened by.
Jennifer Bartlett menu cover for Chanterelle
Robert Indiana and Cy Twombly menu covers for Chanterelle
While reading the closing and sale notice for the artwork, I started to think about the role of art and design in the culinary world and vice versa. After barely scratching the surface, here are a few other examples that stand out:
It’s safe to say that the food itself IS the art at Ferran Adrià’s el Bulli in Catalonia, Spain. The chef’s books and website document and catalog his creative work, while reinforcing the el Bulli brand – sleek, a bit disorienting and way out of the ordinary.
Ferran Adrià - el Bulli Restaurant
el Bulli - food as art
OPEN-restaurant is a collective of California-based chefs who combine food, design, art and activism through live performance.
Per the group’s website: OPEN turns the idea of “restaurant,” its codes and architecture, into a medium for artistic expression.
A recent OPEN event featured a spit-roasted 650-pound steer that was loaded onto a trailer and pulled by tricycle-riding bike messengers for 6.7 miles to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Once there, it was carved by a team of female butchers and then consumed by 400 people who paid to take part in the piece. The audience experienced both revulsion and fascination as the meat was cut and the spectacle unfolded.
OPEN restaurant - 650 lb steer
OPEN restaurant - SFMOMA
OPEN restaurant - SFMOMA
Restaurante Martín Berasategui is a three Michelin-starred restaurant near San Sebastián in the Basque Country of Northern Spain. The restaurant’s website, a beautifully executed design itself, uses simple and oddly riveting video to great effect.
The cookbook for Restaurant Au Pied de Cochon in Montréal, with illustrations and graphic design by Tom Tassel, is as much a scrapbook and album as it is a guide to the extreme cooking style of chef Martin Picard.
Restaurant Au Pied de Cochon
Au Pied de Cochon - The Album - cookbook design and illustration
I find the connection between food & art so interesting. I don’t know much about OPEN restaurant – something I definitely want to learn more about. Thanks for sharing!!
Thanks Megan. Your blog reminded me of “Van Gogh’s Table at the Auberge Ravoux – Recipes From the Artist’s Last Home and Paintings of Café Life” by Alexandra Leaf and Fred Leeman, another artist inspired cookbook.