After spending an afternoon browsing exhibits and hitting up the gift shop, heading to a museum cafeteria or cafe for a meal might not be the first thing on patrons’ minds. But recent rollouts suggest museums are looking to change that mindset, tapping into the talents of local restaurateurs and leveraging the themes of their sites to up their foodservice game. Here are six ways museums across the country are whetting diners’ appetites.
At Sweet Home Cafe, inside the brand-new National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., the line for tables can sometimes run up to two hours, The New York Times reports. But diners are waiting that long for a reason—Executive Chef Jerome Grant and his team are trying to tell the story of the black experience in America through food.
Four stations—The Agricultural South, The Creole Coast, The North States and The Western Range—represent a variety and range of African-American cuisines throughout history. Dishes range from Original Brunswick Stew with braised chicken, rabbit, tomatoes and lima beans in The Agricultural South, to Pan Roast Rainbow Trout with cornbread and mustard greens stuffing in The Western Range.
Like Sweet Home Cafe, the Soda Shop inside The National WWII Museum in New Orleans strives to take diners on a trip back in time—but with a slightly less educational bent. Seasonal sodas include flavors like melon and nectar (a New Orleans classic featuring vanilla, almond, egg white and cream), while build-your-own breakfast sandwiches include classic 1940s and ’50s Americana options such as housemade Spam.
Since MoMA PS1 occupies an abandoned schoolhouse space in Long Island City, N.Y., it naturally would follow that the M. Wells Dinette would be set inside a classroom. Visitors sit in repurposed school chairs while seated at long desks, complete with cubbies underneath, and menus are written on green chalkboards. The dishes, however, are completely antithetical to their surroundings. A caviar batard features trout roe, dill and sour cream, while a spaghetti sandwich on sesame brioche comes with a side of Caesar salad.
Lula Cafe has been a huge draw for locals since it opened 18 years ago in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood. Now, the city’s Museum of Contemporary Art is tapping the cafe's chef-owner Jason Hammel in hopes that same star power will attract diners to a new restaurant that’s part of a $16 million renovation plan, the Chicago Tribune reports. No word yet whether Hammel will also be in charge of revamping the museum’s current catering menu.
While no one really knows exactly what people ate during Biblical times, the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., is working to approximate the correct Israeli-Mediterranean flavors when it opens in fall 2017, Washingtonian magazine reports. The new cafe, dubbed Manna, will be set up cafeteria-style, with the stations each offering a different Israeli-Mediterranean street food. The concept, from local restaurateurs Todd Gray and Ellen Kassoff Gray, will feature vegetarian dishes, but with rotisserie-cooked leg of lamb and fish on the menu as well. Upstairs, the coffee shop—called Milk & Honey—will offer traditional coffee-based drinks, as well as grab-and-go sandwiches, salads, hummus with pita chips and soft-serve yogurt.
While the main exhibition halls at Chihuly Garden and Glass museum in Seattle are filled with elaborate handmade glass creations from throughout Dale Chihuly’s career, its Collections Cafe displays a different side of the artist’s passion. The Puget Sound native began collecting beach glass as a child and developed a multitude of other collections throughout his life, including accordions, vintage keys, toy cars, radios, china figurines, bottle openers, fish lures and more. The knickknacks now serve as Collections Cafe’s main decor, displayed on shelves, inside glass-topped tables and suspended from the ceiling.
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