THEWALLSTREETJOURNAL 1 Dining, Drinks, Drama: The New Dinner Theater Forget everything you think you know about dinner and a show. Across the U.S. and Europe, restaurateurs are putting performance on the menu in spectacular new ways LIGHT ENTERTAINMENT | At the NoMad Hotel in New York, guests sip cocktails while Dan White performs ‘The Magician.’ PHOTO: DANNY KIM FOR WALL STREET JOURNA By JAY CHESHES April 17, 2015 ON THE SECOND FLOOR of the NoMad Hotel in New York, in a conference room transformed into a cabaret theater, Dan White was testing out his new production, “The Magician,” on the hotel restaurant’s staff. “Tonight you’re going to witness a magic show unlike any you’ve ever seen before,” he said, as the audience sipped Prosecco and nibbled on truffle-kissed kettle corn. Then he walked through a mirror, ran through a succession of how-did-he-do-that card tricks and made a man’s ring disappear. If this sounds like about what you’d expect from a magic show, the drinks and snacks served on opening night a few days later were anything but: The popcorn was flavored, like chef Daniel Humm’s signature roast chicken, with foie gras and black truffles, and barman Leo Robitschek’s inventive handcrafted cocktails included a tropical libation served in a golden pineapple goblet.
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THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 1
Dining, Drinks, Drama: The New Dinner Theater
Forget everything you think you know about dinner and a show. Across the U.S. and Europe, restaurateurs are putting performance on the menu in spectacular new ways
LIGHT ENTERTAINMENT | At the NoMad Hotel in New York, guests sip cocktails while Dan White performs ‘The Magician.’ PHOTO: DANNY KIM FOR WALL STREET JOURNA By JAY CHESHES April 17, 2015
ON THE SECOND FLOOR of the NoMad Hotel in New York, in a conference room transformed into a cabaret theater, Dan White was testing out his new production, “The Magician,” on the hotel restaurant’s staff. “Tonight you’re going to witness a magic show unlike any you’ve ever seen before,” he said, as the audience sipped Prosecco and nibbled on truffle-kissed kettle corn. Then he walked through a mirror, ran through a succession of how-did-he-do-that card tricks and made a man’s ring disappear. If this sounds like about what you’d expect from a magic show, the drinks and snacks served on opening night a few days later were anything but: The popcorn was flavored, like chef Daniel Humm’s signature roast chicken, with foie gras and black truffles, and barman Leo Robitschek’s inventive handcrafted cocktails included a tropical libation served in a golden pineapple goblet.
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The show, running Friday nights for the foreseeable future, is the latest collaboration between restaurateur Will Guidara, his chef-partner Mr. Humm and the team of magicians at Theory11, a collective whose sleight-of-hand specialists have diverted guests for the last two years at the NoMad’s now annual Halloween Masquerade Ball. “We love all things magical,” said Mr. Guidara at the official debut. “That’s what we do in our restaurants every night.”
The Magician is one of many new projects bringing serious food and drink into the performance arena, from Chicago to San Francisco, Luxembourg to Ibiza (where brothers Ferran and Albert Adrià areopening a new project soon with Cirque du Soleil). At supper clubs and dinner theaters, nightclubs and live music festivals, the lines between dining and spectacle are becoming increasingly blurred.
It’s a natural progression for the world’s most cutting-edge chefs, who often integrate theatrical elements into the meals they serve: the iPod tucked into a conch shell in one famous seafood dish at Britain’s Fat Duck, or the card trick Theory11 developed for the tasting menu at the NoMad’s sister restaurant Eleven Madison Park. “There was plenty of surprise and wonder in the food before we got involved,” said Theory11’s co-founder Jonathan Bayme, whom Mr. Guidara unearthed through a Google search. Adding an extra dimension to dinner is often a given these days at top-tier destination restaurants like Ultraviolet in Shanghai, where multi-course meals come surrounded by immersive video art, or Chicago’s Alinea, where they can end with a chef painting dessert on the table.
For some restaurant professionals, the impulse to entertain goes well beyond the kitchen and dining room. Chefs who once aspired to be musicians and actors are finding new ways to bring their preoccupations together. “To curate an experience of exceptional food and exceptional music, that was important to me,” saidAlexander Smalls, a professional opera singer turned chef who last year opened the jazz supper club Minton’s in Harlem, where he programs the music and oversees the high-end Southern cuisine.
More than ever before, chefs and restaurateurs are stepping into the role of self-styled P.T. Barnums, shaping not just the dining experience but also entertainment to go along with it. And they’re often doing it in unconventional venues—like the Barcelona art gallery where Spanish chef Joan Roca and his brothers Josep and Jordi put together a food opera in 2013. Like many of these chefs, Chicago’s Rick Bayless, who recently co-wrote and starred in his own musical-theater dinner show, sees his foray into stagecraft not as a sideline, but as an extension of his overall mission to upend customers’ expectations. “One of the things that feeds me creatively,” Mr. Bayless said, “is to be able to do things outside the restaurant world.”
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The Best of the New Culinary-Performance Mashups Worldwide
THE EDGY EATING INSTALLATION |SENSORIUM, NEW YORK
For former screenwriter and industrial designerEmilie Baltz the intersection of food and performance is an almost full-time vocation. In 2011 she helped New York chef John Fraser mount a pop-up—What Happens When—where the music, design and food followed a story that changed every month. She’s since done food-performance commissions for museums and theaters, working with chefs likeJose Ramirez-Ruiz of Brooklyn’s Semilla; in one, dancers under the table caused the food to “perform.” “Finding the right collaborator is important,” she said, “just wacky, nimble and experimental enough.” In February 2014, she co-produced Lickestra, in which the licking of ice cream cones embedded with sensors triggered a musical composition. And last May she collaborated with Brooklyn Brewery chef Andrew Gerson on a dinner in a decommissioned nuclear power plant in Stockholm. Ms. Baltz hopes to debut a show with an in-flight theme and the working title “Sensorium” off-Broadway in Manhattan this summer. emiliebaltz.com
THE GASTRO-CIRCUS | HEART, IBIZA
Brothers Ferran and Albert Adrià have pushed the limits of food as theater for the last 20 years, at restaurants like El Bulli and Tickets in the Catalonia region of Spain. This summer they’ll cross fully into the performance realm when they open Heart in the Ibiza Gran Hotel, a dining complex as three-ring circus developed with Cirque du Soleil. “We didn’t want to do a dinner theater,” said Albert Adrià. “There will be performances while you eat, but they’ll be more like live art installations.” An evening might begin on the porch, where carts offering global street food circulate among body painters, dancers and diners. The international theme continues inside the “Workshop,” a “restaurant that’s not a restaurant,” according toFrank Helpin, creative director at Cirque du Soleil Hospitality. Diners share family-style meals inspired by Mexico, China and Peru among other places, while performers do their thing inside glass boxes. At 1 a.m. the space transforms into a nightclub with creative cocktails and snacks, and room for 700 on the dance floor. “If we’re successful here,” said Mr. Helpin, “we might roll out the concept to other locations.” heartibiza.com
THE FLAMENCO FEAST | CASCABEL, CHICAGO
Last summer Rick Bayless brought his fascination with Mexican food and culture on stage when Cascabel—a dinner show where he dances, acts and serves food—began its second run at Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre Company. The show features performers feasting while audience members dine along with them. The food helps tell the story, a magical-realist tale of unrequited love, with Mr. Bayless playing a chef who woos with beef tenderloin in a rich mole sauce. That means getting the same caliber of food that people have come to expect from his restaurants out to an audience of 190 people simultaneously—in four minutes. “It was a real Hogwarts moment,” said Mr. Bayless, who runs some of the country’s most acclaimed high-end Mexican restaurants, grew up in a theatrical family and, for a while, pursued acting in college. He hopes to revive his stage show in 2016, if he can get the whole crew—including his flamenco dancer co-star—back together again.lookingglasstheatre.org; rickbayless.com
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THE RAVENOUS ROCK SHOW | BOQUERIA, LUXEMBOURG
Spanish chef Sergi Arola is no stranger to the spotlight. The former host of Spain’s version of “Hell’s Kitchen” was once an aspiring rock star. While running an international restaurant empire that includes a flagship in Madrid with two Michelin stars, he also plays guitar and sings in a band called Joe Ray, which just recorded its second album. “Performing makes me feel alive,” he said. This summer, for the first time, he’ll marry his two interests when he launches a cabaret restaurant in Luxembourg with a banker friend. “I had never before imagined doing food with a show,” said the chef. The menu will change, he expects, depending on the type of performance (the lineup is still in the planning stage). The cabaret, open three nights a week, will be part of a complex run by Mr. Arola with a tapas bar, formal restaurant and takeout shop. sergiarola.es
