Image via Complex Original
Instagram food porn may be the latest craze when it comes to the collision of art and food, but the history of eateries and artwork as a dynamic duo dates back much, much further (and in a much more traditional way).
At Maxim's de Paris, designer/tastemaker Pierre Cardin has created a restaurant that acts as an Art Nouveau time machine (in a good way). Zurich's Kronenhalle and St. Paul de Vence's La Colombe d'Or are long-standing meeting places for some of the world's best-known artists, who've been known to pay for their bill with a masterpiece instead of cash, on occasion.
From newcomers like Faith & Flower to the iconic eateries mentioned above, these are The 20 Restaurants With the Best Art Collections.
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20. Faith & Flower
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Year founded: 2014
Art was far from an afterthought at Faith & Flower, a new Los Angeles hotspot that commissioned well-known Los Angeles artist Robert Vargas to create two large murals and an abstract portrait installation for the restaurant and bar. (You can watch him at work here.)
19. Florida Cookery
Location: Miami Beach
Year founded: 2012
New York comes to South Beach at Florida Cookery, the signature restaurant at the art-loving James Royal Palm Hotel, in which you'll find fabulous works of art throughout the property's common areas. But within the restaurant, it's Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Vincent Laforet's work that really stands out, with now iconic images of Coney Island and Central Park's Great Lawn.
18. Dooky Chase's
Location: New Orleans
Year founded: 1941
A New Orleans institution for nearly 70 years, Dooky Chase's is probably best known for its signature Creole dishes, like fried chicken, shrimp Clemenceau, chicken Creole, and gumbo Z'Herbes. But Dooky and Leah Chase's longstanding support of African American artists is just as legendary, with the restaurant's collection often cited as one of the area's best, including dozens of established and emerging artists (Elizabeth Catlett, David Driskell, John T. Biggers, and Jacob Lawrence, among them).
17. Sketch
Location: London
Year founded: 2003
Think of Sketch as a rotating exhibit that happens to serve some really great creative European cuisine. Here's how it works: The powers that be commission a talented artist to transform the restaurant into a work of art—literally—with the pieces later being sold both online and/or in galleries. Currently, Sketch is showing off the work of Turner Prize nominee David Shrigley, who is showcasing his largest-ever exhibit of 239 original drawings. Ceramic tableware turns the exhibit into a literally "hands-on" event.
16. SUSHISAMBA
Location: New York, Chicago, Miami Beach, Las Vegas, and London
Year founded: 1999
Global fusion eats meet global fusion art at SUSHISAMBA, the popular Japanese-Brazilian-Peruvian restaurant that boasts locations worldwide. And while the menu may vary slighty from location to location, the restaurant's penchant for street art remains firmly intact. For the mini-chain's London restaurant, São Paulo-based artist Flip provided the décor. The restaurant is taking its dedication to street art one step further with Graffiti Gone Global, an annual art show the restaurant runs in conjunction with Art Basel Miami Beach (which just so happens to take place a few blocks from the restaurant's South Beach location).
15. Lucio's
Location: Sydney
Year founded: 1983
Local artists get the royal treatment at this popular Italian eatery down under, with a 500-piece collection that appropriately includes a few napkin sketches. It's an assemblage several decades in the making, with such prominent Australian artists as John Olsen, Tim Storrier, John Coburn, John Beard, Salvatore Zofrea, and Margaret Woodward among those who have made the cut.
14. ArtBar
Location: Cambridge, MA
Year founded: 2009
The Royal Sonesta Hotel in Cambridge is dedicated to showcasing some of today's best conceptual, minimal, and pop art from both emerging and established artists alike (they've got about 750 pieces of museum-quality work, including works by Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, and Buckminster Fuller). Their collection has extended to its on-site bar and eatery, where diners can browse pieces by Stephen Mueller, Claes Oldenburg, Leah De Prizio, Hamish Fulton, Debra Weisberg, and Jason Salavon.
13. The Modern
Location: New York
Year founded: 2005
If you want to be wowed by the art at MoMA's fine dining eatery, just look out the window. The restaurant has a perfect view of The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden and pieces like Auguste Rodin's Monument to Balzac.
12. Mr. Chow
Location: New York, Beverly Hills, Miami Beach, Malibu, and London
Year founded: 1968
For 46 years, Mr. Chow has been serving up Beijing cuisine to a cult-like following of diners at locations around the world. And at the same time, the restaurant has earned a well-deserved reputation as a sort of ersatz art gallery, with Andy Warhol, Julian Schnabel, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, David Hockney, Peter Blake, and Cy Twombly among the artists whose works have hung on their walls.
11. Tramshed
Location: London
Year founded: 2012
Chef/restaurateur Mark Hix has made a habit of giving art equal billing in his family of restaurants. But nowhere is it as difficult to ignore than at the meat-loving Tramshed, a steak and chicken focused restaurant in London's Shoreditch neighborhood, where a formaldehyde-preserved cow and rooster survey the scene from high above the crowd, thanks to the one and only Damien Hirst.
10. Wallsé
Location: New York
Year founded: 2000
In addition to his unique interpretation of Austrian food, Kurt Gutenbrunner, chef and co-owner of Wallsé, has been praised for his ability to fuse beautiful food with major works of art. His West Village eatery features sketches by Martin Kippenberger and photographs by Dennis Hopper, but its centerpiece is an original (and quite large) painting by Julian Schnabel.
9. Caravaggio
Location: New York
Year founded: 2009
If you like a multi-million dollar art collection as a side to your osso bucco, Caravaggio—located across from the Whitney Museum of Art on Manhattan's Upper East Side—is the perfect place to find it. Paintings by Frank Stella, a custom column and drawings by Beatrice Caracciolo, and a quartet of stencil lithographs by Henri Matisse (which are located in the private dining room) are some of the art treasures inside.
8. Picasso
Location: Las Vegas
Year founded: 1998
True to its name, executive chef Julian Serrano's fine dining establishment at the Bellagio is a tribute to the world's most famous Cubist. A variety of Picasso masterpieces and ceramics decorate the dining room, and the menu offers a mix of cuisines from two of Picasso's favorite places: Spain and France.
7. Kronenhalle
Location: Zurich
Year founded: 1924
Art is an international affair at Zurich's near-century-old Kronenhalle, which has a longstanding reputation as a meeting place for artists of all kinds, some of whom would pay with pieces of their work, which is how the restaurant acquired original works by Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, and Joan Miró. That bar table that's holding up your martini? Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti sculpted that.
6. Michael's
Location: Santa Monica
Year founded: 1979
Fine dining meets fine art at Michael McCartney's contemporary California eatery, where a laidback vibe allows a more comfortable setting to take in the impressive works that line the walls of both the dining room and patio, with Jasper Johns, David Hockney, Frank Stella, Robert Graham, and Jim Dine among the represented artists.
5. L'Escargot
Location: London
Year founded: 1927
Don't let the French name—or menu—fool you. L'Escargot is a Soho tradition, not to mention London's oldest (and most celebrated) French restaurant. And a large part of its 87-year-history can be seen in the museum-worthy art collection it has amassed over the years, which features the work of Marc Chagall and a Mauro Perucchetti sculpture that (literally) looms over diners who dare to sit under it.
4. Tru
Location: Chicago
Year founded: 1999
Celebrated chef Anthony Martin's beautifully presented menu of progressive French food is a perfect complement to Tru's elegant, contemporary art-covered surroundings, where works by Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, and Peter Halley are hung gallery style throughout the dining room and private rooms.
3. Maxim's de Paris
Location: Paris
Year founded: 1893
Nonagenarian fashion designer Pierre Cardin has made a living out of being awesome. So it's no surprise that his iconic restaurant in Paris' 8th arrondissement is a work of art in its own right. Housed in a space that dates all the way back to 1893, Maxim's feels a bit like stepping back into the 19th century. Cardin has left many of the restaurant's original Art Nouveau trappings—displayed over three floors that serve as a sort of art museum—that go beyond paintings and number more than 500 pieces (including lamps by Louis Comfort Tiffany, a Majorelle serving table, and glass works by Émile Gallé).
2. Casa Lever
Location: New York
Year founded: 2009
Casa Warhol might be a better name for this always-packed Milanese restaurant in midtown Manhattan, since more than a dozen of the famed pop artist's celebrity portraits—including the colorful mugs of Alfred Hitchcock, Mick Jagger, Aretha Franklin, and Sylvester Stallone—line the walls (all of them are courtesy of the Lever House Art Collection).
1. La Colombe d'Or
Location: St. Paul de Vence, France
Year founded: 1920
Located on the French Riviera, the medieval town of St. Paul de Vence is a haven for art lovers, with dozens of museums and galleries situated within just a few square miles. This explains why so many of the world's most celebrated artists—Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse among them—were frequent visitors to this legendary café (which back then was known as Chez Robinson), and occasionally agreed to settle their bar tabs with an original artwork. Today, nearly a century after its opening, La Colombe d'Or boasts one of the world's most impressive art collections, easily rivaling many museums and galleries. Amedeo Modigliani and Alexander Calder are among the other artists you'll find on display here.