As described on their website :: " What Happens When is a playground for food. It is a temporary restaurant installation that transforms every 30 days for 9 months, offering guests an ever-changing culinary, visual and sound experience. This delicious exhibition is a result of the collaboration between one chef, two designers, a photographer and a composer. Towards the end of the month, we’ll sit down around a table and inspire each other with ideas we’ve collected from our respective worlds of cuisine, design, photography and music. Add a sprinkling of memories and personal stories to the mix from our patrons and we’re ready to make an expression of What Happens When we take the cooking process out of the kitchen and into the world.Cooks want guests to focus on the plates, I want people to look around.”
- Chef John Fraser
Every 30 days guests at What Happens When will experience a new menu, a new interior design, a new brand and a new soundscape for the space.
We call these changes Movements.
Our goal is to make people look around. To invite wonder and reflection. And to see What Happens When…
(Movement 3)
Drawing inspiration from this renown Impressionistic painting, Movement 3 is about taking a trip together into the 1880′s France via 2011 New York.
The interiors draw a few significant elements from the Renoir painting to re-create an intimate, communal experience reminiscent of 19th century time and place. Note the 25’ awning, the “garden party” string lighting and interpretations of still life paintings in 3 dimensions around the room.
Composed by Ball of Flame Shoot Fire, the sound is a dense collage of French music from the thirteenth through the twenty-first century, using material from old LPs and film/video clips as well as digitally warped sound files.
From the kitchen, you’ll enjoy modern dishes inspired by the flavors and menus of classic 19th century France, as well as notice adaptations of painting techniques as applied to cooking and plating. Colors of sunburnt coasts and washed out oceanic textures compliment the historical influences of this early Modernist period where the flavors tell a story of joie de vivre in the provençal lifestyle"
