Grub & Vine, Norval Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa
The Norval Foundation in Cape Town was established to showcase and promote South African art as well as art and culture from African diasporas. The Foundation provides arts education for schoolchildren who lack resources and opportunities to learn about the subject. Shows here have ranged from works by historical artists such as Irma Stern to contemporary creatives including Zanele Muholi, Yinka Shonibare and Michael Armitage, ensuring visitors of all ages, experiences and exposures to the art world are able to gain important insights into African culture.
Part of the Foundation’s offering is its recently installed Grub & Vine restaurant, an outpost of the original Cape Town eatery established by Matt Manning. The chef has a background in respected Michelin-starred venues, including working for Gordon Ramsay and Marcus Wareing, and also at the renowned La Colombe. South African cuisine has charmed many gourmands with its lush, seasonal synthesis of different national cuisines and combinations of ingredients. Manning’s cooking in this location is a statement of intent that aligns with the Norval’s belief in inclusivity and the sharing of refined experiences with as wide an audience as possible. The menu pays homage to classic South African cuisine, and all the ingredients are sourced from local, small-batch suppliers. The wine list is chosen with the intention of uplifting local winemaking communities, in line with the philanthropic aims of the Foundation. The space blends nature and architecture, as diners can overlook the natural wetlands and Sculpture Garden on the Foundation’s grounds.
Nerua, Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain
What’s it like to eat inside a sculpture? Diners can experience this at Nerua, the restaurant space in the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim Bilbao. A destination for gastronomes, Bilbao is a gateway to the Basque region’s finest cuisine and Michelin-starred restaurants. This means its ‘local’ museum has to offer something of a suitable calibre, and its restaurant even holds its own Michelin star. Chef Josean Alija seeks to ‘cook with pleasure and fun’, but also ‘defend the terroir and producers who make our aim possible’. Diners enter through the kitchen, which establishes its priority and involves them in the performance of cooking. Materials including maple wood and lacquered sheet metal reinforce the restaurant, which becomes an extension of the sculptural museum. Guests can enjoy Alija’s aromatic flavours and seafood-and-land combinations while looking out at the river through the legs of Louise Bourgeois’ Maman spider sculpture. This year, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Picasso’s death, diners have been able to combine their restaurant visit with the landmark Picasso Sculptor exhibition, a show that charts the progression of the artist’s experiments in sculpture.
Spazio7, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy
The Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation champions international contemporary artists who are not afraid to challenge and provoke. Its founder, philanthropist and arts patron Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, has been collecting the work of avant-garde artists for over 20 years, and has supported talent through the decades, including Sarah Lucas, Anish Kapoor and Maurizio Cattelan. A spirit of provocation and surprise permeates the 2,000-strong collection, of which many works are displayed on rotation in different outposts of the Foundation, including this main space in Turin. Here, visitors might view exhibitions such as the recent Backwards Ahead, which included a wall of lifelike doughnuts by Josh Kline and June Crespo’s life-size sculpture of a woman catapulted across the room. But if they include a meal in the Foundation’s Michelin-starred restaurant Spazio7, they will also question and delight in a tasting menu that includes not only the finest Piedmont ingredients, but also eccentricities such as a 3D-moulded fried chicken leg made with chicken, banana and corn flakes (listed on the menu as ‘It’s not deep fried chicken’). These come courtesy of Chef Antonio Romano, no stranger to Michelin cooking from a young age, having worked in Dinner by Heston Blumenthal and La Pergola in Rome.
Patrizia’s son, Emilio, presides over the restaurant project, which includes a delectable local wine list, as well as some of the family’s vintages. Renowned contemporary minimalist architect Claudio Silvestrin designed the restaurant space, where diners are surrounded by a ceiling-to-floor intergalactic mural by Amadeo Martegani, while Alessandro Ciffo’s silicone, candy-coloured vases on every table also help to elevate the dining experience to a multisensorial delight.
Design Kitchen, Design Museum, London
In September 2023, The Design Museum relaunched The Design Kitchen, a restaurant and lounge designed by Matthew Williamson to be an ‘uplifting yet relaxed’ space mixing mid-century furniture and contemporary pieces with a palette of greens, terracotta and blue, inspired by the view of nearby Holland Park. Williamson is connected to the institution, having won a British Fashion Council NewGen award, and he had his own exhibition at the museum in 2007. He wanted to place the natural setting in conversation with the architectural power of the building, striking a balance between maximalism and minimalism via velvet florals and mid-century clean lines, but also quirky, exotic accents that connect to the Victorian design of Holland Park, with its palms, peacocks and fountains. Williamson is no stranger to designing hospitality spaces that mix vintage, bespoke and contemporary pieces in a way that’s inspirational for visitors and makes them feel at home. The Design Kitchen has a contemporary British menu of salads, soups and juices, and around 90 per cent of the pieces in the space are vintage or sourced from within the UK. This focus on localisation is in keeping with the museum’s commitment to design-based answers to carbon reduction, as explored in its ongoing Future Observatory project. The views of Holland Park, which still feels like a hidden gem in London, wrap around the restaurant, which elevates diners up into the trees.
designmuseum.org/plan-your-visit/eat-drink
Faro Bar + Restaurant, Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Tasmania
The requesting of guests’ dietary requirements is taken to a new level at this restaurant, where diners fill out waivers as they arrive (giving permission to be ‘experimented on’; not to hold MONA responsible for any potential restaurant-experiment disappointment; and to only vent said disappointment on social media that isn’t TikTok), then take off their shoes and leave all their belongings behind when they enter. This is because the dining experience at MONA is prefaced by a huge eyeball-shaped installation (Unseen Seen), courtesy of James Turrell, and diners’ own eyeballs are ‘pulverised’ with strobe lights and fading colours. The artwork sits in the middle of the restaurant overlooking the bay, on the newest wing of the museum, Pharos, which can only be accessed via a different Turrell artwork – a light tunnel over a bridge, which makes you feel as if you’re embarking on a religious procession or perhaps the journey to the afterlife. From here, visitors can look over the water and the rest of the museum island (including another Turrell on a cliff overhead that changes colour and mood with the daylight). The award-winning menu offers plates composed of locally sourced Tasmanian ingredients and some unusual touches, including crispy ants. Diners can even order artworks to buy off the menu. Tasmania’s microclimate benefits its burgeoning and respected wine industry, and Faro Bar + Restaurant offers several wines from the Moorilla Estate, where the museum complex is located.
mona.net.au/eat-drink/faro-bar-plus-restaurant
Odette, National Gallery, Singapore
Chef Julien Royer opened this restaurant in November 2015. Within four years it had earned three Michelin stars, and it topped Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list in 2019 and 2020. Odette is flanked by galleries and a national collection that showcases two centuries of Southeast Asian art, with works including those by Georgette Chen and Chen Chong Swee. Royer sees this connection as natural. ‘We are surrounded by art in different forms, such as paintings and sculpture, in a building that itself is a true jewel,’ he says. ‘It definitely excites and inspires.’ The exquisite menu is constructed with the same care as an ink drawing or a portrait, applying layers and levels for a saturated effect. You could start with an amuse bouche such as the ‘modern version of a gougère’ – a tightly designed rectangular shell filled with 24-month aged comté cheese – or the crispy tartelette of Cévennes onion and liquorice. Among the signature dishes, Le Pigeon Fabien Deneour En 3 Services is executed as an artistic presentation of the whole bird. All in all, a visit to both the National Gallery and Odette, to experience the quality and confidence of both spaces, reinforces the multicultural influences that make Singapore a success story as a prosperous community, which in turn supports and is committed to supporting world-class artistic and cultural institutions.
Dr Christina Makris is a writer, lecturer, cultural commentator and the author of Aesthetic Dining: The Art Restaurant Around the World (2021), the first book to examine art collections in restaurants over the past century. She has been involved with the hospitality industry as a consultant and investor, and works with luxury brands including Patek Philippe and Moët Hennessy, among others. She is currently writing a book on wine and culture.
