Want to See Awesome Street Art? Go to a Hot New Restaurant

Want to See Awesome Street Art? Go to a Hot New Restaurant

Want to See Awesome Street Art? Go to a Hot New Restaurant

David Choe's mural in the dining room at Momofuku Ko in New York.

Credit: Gabriele Stabile

Vocabulary Preview

improbable interior graffiti mammoth mural(s)
permanent striking stark consume(d) multiple
pixelated depict(s)

A) Match the words to the meanings

1. __ improbable

2. __ interior

3. __ graffiti

4. __ mammoth

5. __ mural

6. __ permanent

7. __ striking

8. __ stark

9. __ consume

10.__ multiple

11.__ pixelated

12.__ depict

B) Complete the sentences with the correct word.

  1. There really isn't enough evidence to prove that he committed the crime,

so it's ______that he'll be convicted.

  1. The walls of the old building are covered with ______
  2. The museum's ______ collection includes works of art from the 18th

century.

  1. She made ______copies of the report.
  2. The photograph ______the two brothers standing in front of a store.

Reading Passage

P1)Your favorite street artists’ latest works just found an improbable new home: the interior walls of hot, buzzy restaurants. Instead of going to a gallery, you can now see large-format murals and graffiti on the walls next to dining room tables and restaurant kitchens. Except unlike traditional gallery and museum settings, you get to do more than passively look on at the art. You’re in it, you’re eating, and you’re taking it all in. We spoke to chefs and owners, from Detroit and Portland to New York and Indianapolis, who have commissioned mammoth, eye-catching murals inside their restaurants to learn more.

Chartreuse’s vestibule mural. Photo: Kaila Marie

Hometown, Represent
P2)The entryway of Chartreuse in Detroit is covered in a floor-to-ceiling mural of plants, flowers, and vegetables—any of the 100+ ingredients that appear in Chartreuse, the French liqueur made by monks. “We’d seen Louise ‘Ouizi’ Chen’s work around town, and we were huge fans, so we thought it would be cool to have something of hers in the restaurant,” said Sandy Levine, owner of Chartreuse Kitchen & Cocktailsin Detroit. “We’re also in the Arts District, and you can see the Detroit Institute of Arts from our dining room. There’s an insane amount of creativity in Detroit, and a lot of collaboration here. We wanted diners to ask about it, and be able to tell them this story about a living, breathing person, who’s awesome and talented, that we know.”

P3) That’s true of the new Momofuku Ko (a a Top 50 nominee) location in New York too. Chef-owner David Chang has been friends with artistDavid Choefor years. Choe doesn’t have a permanent place to display his work in the city, so why not have Ko be his artistic home? The dining room and kitchen walls became his canvases, and now host three full-scale works.

P4)At Milktoothin Indianapolis , it’s all about that sense of community. “We’re really connected to our community and neighborhood, and we like showcasing the talents of local artists,” Ashley Brooks, co-owner of Milktooth in Indianapolis, explained. So when the owners decided Milktooth should have murals (in the bathrooms!) and installations, they looked toThe Droops, a local artist collective connected to some of the artists and musicians on staff.

Bring the Outside Inside
P5) “I think it kind of brings the outside inside,” said Amanda Cohen, chef-owner of Dirt Candyin New York. “We wanted to make it feel like you were eating in a garden. We’re not on the world’s prettiest street, so we wanted to change that.” Noah McDonough, the street artist behind the work, read up on different kinds of weeds, plants, and flowers, then made it happen. Said Cohen, “He made it feel like you’re not in some closed off restaurant. One of my favorite movie scenes is the Ascot scene from My Fair Lady. It’s so striking, that black and white with those little moments of color. The color comes to mean so much more. Now, when we put down the food, you get that moment of, oh, look at all that color.”

P6)The interior of Kung Pow! with the mural on the left. Photo: Henry Liu

A Vacation From the Everyday
“We wanted it to be a stark thing where you walk in and you more than just notice that you’re in a different place. It’s overwhelming. You went from the outside world to our world of green vegetation,” Levine said of the vegetable mural at Chartreuse. “We have no kitchen storage—no walk-in refrigerator or freezer—and we get multiple deliveries of vegetables a day. We’re vegetable-forward, so we wanted you to be consumed by plants, flowers, and vegetables.”

P7)At the newly opened Kung Pow! in Portland, the goal is to have you step off the Portland street and into a decidedly Chinese restaurant. That means facing off with a crazy 14- by 20-foot mural. It’s a pixelated representation of a picture of a street in China that chef-owner Henry Liu’s wife, who designed the space, found. Dom Cardoso, an artist, staffer at animation studio Laika, and a friend of Liu’s painted it for them. “It depicts what a street in China is like. We want you to know that now you’re in a Chinese restaurant,” said Liu.

A) Reading Comprehension Questions:

1). What is this article mainly about?

a) Restaurants need artists to help with business.

b) Chefs cook better if the restaurant is aesthetically decorated.

c) Besides providing gourmet dishes, restaurants can also be a place for art

lovers.

d) Guests come to the restaurant just for artists’ work.

2) In the passage, the word “overwhelming ” in paragraph 6, line 4, is closest in

meaning to ?

a)Difficult to ​fight against

b)Believe someone's statement, without proof.

c) Come to the point

d)Crazy, demented, out of one's mind

3)According to paragraph 2, what is Not indicated about Sandy Levine?

a)She is an artist.

b)She runs Chartreuse in Detroit.

c) Her restaurant is in an Art District.

d) Diners engage themselves into artwork while eating there.

4) What is true about Momofuku Ko?

a)Guests are allowed to paint on the walls in Momofuku Ko.

b)David Change’s artist friend made his restaurant as a gallery.

c)Choe is a chef.

d)David Chang is an artist.

5)According to paragraph 4, what is mentioned about Milktooth ?

a) The Droops is Milktooth’s branch.

b) They have murals in the kitchen.

c) Ashley Brooks is the owner and chef.

d) The owner has been making the connection between the restaurant and the

community.

B) Choose T for True and F for False

1) True or False: At Chartreuse, dinners enjoy fresh meat.

2) True or False: Dinning in Dirt Candy feels like eating in the garden.

3)True or False: There is a 14- by 20-foot mural in Chartreuse.

4)True or False: Kung Pow! is a Chinese restaurant.

Answers:

Vocabulary Preview

Part A

1. b

2. f

3. l

4. e

5. i

6. h

7. g

8. a

9. d

10. c

11. k

12. j

Part B

1. improbable

2. graffiti

3. permanent

4. multiple

5. depicts

Reading Comprehension

Part A Part B

1) c1) False

2)a 2) True

3) a3) False

4) b4) True

5) d

AUGUST 12, 2015 /

WRITTEN BY ELYSSA GOLDBERG