When they designed a restaurant at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, they set out to bring together "a revolving collection of culinary influencers, innovators, and icons to make their contributions accessible for greater public engagement." And according to a review in The New York Times this week they succeeded magnificently.
By avoiding originality, In Situ is the most original new restaurant in the country.
The restaurant opened a month ago inside the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, in a space off the lobby that was built during the museum’s transformative recent expansion. Inside, the chef, Corey Lee, faithfully replicates dishes dreamed up by Sean Brock, Alice Waters and other innovators. None of the recipes are his own.
The Latin phrase “in situ” is used when a work of art is embedded in its original location. This is just what In Situ’s dishes are not. The menu, folded and fastened with a metal museum admissions tag, looks like a guide to a gallery exhibition of works on temporary loan. One side shows a map of the world on a tilted axis — “a dislocation that hints at the shift from a recipe’s origin to its new situation at In Situ,” says a note from Andrea Lenardin Madden, an architect who designed the menu, the table settings, the server’s uniforms and other details.
Neal Benezra, SFMOMA's Director, describes chef Lee as "our curator of food" as he sets out to make In Situ an exhibition restaurant and collaborative project featuring chefs from around the globe.
What a brilliant idea for an art gallery restaurant.
As the NY Times concludes:
One thing In Situ proves, just by existing, is that certain chefs are now cultural figures in a sense that once applied only to practitioners of what used to be called high culture: literature, concert music, avant-garde painting.
No comments:
Post a Comment