Where art tastes great

The fact that MoMA’s bounty of priceless art is often mentioned in the same breathless manner as Kreuther’s culinary élan doesn’t surprise Arthur M. Manask, author of "The Complete Guide to Foodservice in Cultural Institutions" and president and CEO of his eponymous Burbank, California-based consulting firm. “What I hear from museum directors is they want their restaurants to become an attraction, a draw and they want their restaurants to be an integral part of the guests and visitor experience,” he says.

That’s certainly true at the Denver Art Museum, where Palettes, headed up by Executive Chef Kevin Taylor (whose namesake eatery in the boutique Hotel Teatro is highly regarded by local foodies), has been a local institution for 10 years running. Newly relaunched in a fresh commodious space, it continues to serve contemporary American dishes to locals and visitors alike.

Says Manask of this new dynamic, “The reality is that if a percentage of customers are coming because of the restaurant, some percentage are coming to museums that wouldn’t otherwise come and be exposed to your collection, which can translate into new members and donors.”

That’s exactly what’s happening in Vienna, where acclaimed chef Helmut Österreicher has been whipping up modern Viennese cuisine beneath the intricate wood-paneled ceilings of the otherwise arcane Museum of Applied Arts. Here, new modernist fixtures and a glass addition to the garden are juxtaposed with the classical elements of the Tuscan Renaissance structure’s palatial drawing room, making for a dynamic setting.

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Equally bold is the 48-seat Novus restaurant in Singapore’s colonial-style National Museum, which lures urbane gastronomes with plush Paul Smith interiors, fixtures by furniture designer Jasper Morrison and the light continental touch of Aussie toque Dan Masters.

According to Bell, “For some museums, foodservice and dining options are an extension of the museum’s mission—providing dining options that represent the people, cultures or stories that the museum strives to preserve and interpret.” In the case of Singapore, it is that city-states forward-looking ethos.

© Denver Art Museum Having just received a makeover, Kevin Taylor's decade-old stalwart, Palettes, at the Denver Art Museum, continues to draw serious foodies who come for straightforward American cookery like Colorado lamb rib chops with French green lentils, garlic spinach, red wine onions and fresh mint jus, or seared sushi grade tuna with jasmine rice, pickled vegetables, coriander mint "salad" and spiced ponzu.

“Generally speaking, museum directors in the art museum world want to have restaurants that reflect their museum [collection],” says Manask, citing the Dallas Museum of Art, a client, as an example. “They told us that they like their restaurant to be reflective of the fact that they are an encyclopedic museum,” he says, referring to an industry term that describes an institution whose bounty spans all cultures and periods and does not specialize on any one period or culture.

And to the naysayers who deride these outposts of poshness as just revenue-generating juggernauts that water down the cultural experience, Manask says: “All of these museums don’t look at the restaurants to be cash-cows or major areas of revenue. In fact, the restaurants are not profit centers and contribute only a relatively small return that usually covers basics like the costs of utilities and repairs and maintenance.”

For patrons, though, those are semantics. After all, how can anyone denounce tucking into a carefully prepared prix fixe of nouvelle cuisine while gazing at an Old Masters painting?

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