When we started the podcast Nota Bene in 2021, our plan was simple: Hit “record” and gab about the global contemporary art world. We wanted to pull back the curtain (just a little) on an insider’s dialogue, the kind of hushed conversation that bubbles up between a dealer and a gadabout during a vernissage.
It would be flush with market insights and art historical intel, but also witty and gossipy, cutting and incisive, unfiltered and unsparing—“the podcast version,” we called it, “of a boozy lunch at Sant Ambroeus.” What we didn’t realize was that so much of the art world’s chatter would actually be about lunch.
This checks out. Where the art world eats isn’t just a part of the narrative, it is the narrative. The 600-person fundraising luncheons, gala dinners, billionaire breakfast meetings, post-opening cocktail buyouts—you can’t talk about artists and their dealers without talking about where they break bread.
So Nota Bene quickly became as much about food as art. In a typical episode, fair and biennale prattle quickly descends into unapologetically name-droppy litanies of chef-owners and menu items, or gut reactions to seating charts and canapés. There’s lingo: The secret phone number to bypass a booked-solid Resy page is called a “batphone.” When bigwigs are seated in Siberia, we point it out.
This blend of the culinary and the contemporary arts has found its audience—our listeners (the jet-setters and aesthetes) often admit to falling in love with the art world in part for its kinship with the finer things.
For CULTURED’s Art and Food issue, we have compiled the ultimate insider’s list of our favorite art-world haunts along with some advice for where to drop your black card. Check, please!
THE CLASSIC JOINTS
Kronenhalle, Zurich
SETTING: Celebrating its centennial year, this epic dining room sports an art collection worthy of the Kunsthaus up the street: Picasso, Matisse, Rauschenberg, Bonnard, and many others. Don’t skip the attached bar, with its lamps designed by Giacometti.
SCENE: Old school Swiss collectors and dealers are often camped out, so make sure to say “hallo” to Tobias (Mueller), Maja (Hoffmann), and Victor (Gisler). The stop-and-chats go into overdrive during Zurich Art Weekend, right before the O.G. Art Basel (just an hour away by train), when the dining room is packed with a who’s who of the art-loving jet set.
ORDER: Think heavy and Swiss. The sliced veal Kronenhalle-style with roesti is the standard. Pro tip: sub out spaetzli to soak up the sauce. And if the mistkratzerli (roast baby chicken) is on offer, it’s a must—if a certain extraordinarily tasteful American collecting couple hasn't pre-ordered the entire allocation for the week, that is.
Indochine, New York
SETTING: No downtown restaurant encapsulates the go-go ’80s art scene quite like Indochine on Lafayette Street. Hell, the opening party was thrown in honor of Julian Schnabel.
SCENE: Still the gold standard for a mega-gallery buyout. Recent dinners there include bashes for Jamian Juliano-Villani and the epic Paul McCarthy/Albert Oehlen joint show at Gagosian. Pretty much impossible to walk into on a Saturday and not know a soul.
ORDER: Spring rolls, spicy beef salad. People like the lychee saketini—it’s not our thing, but it’s a classic!
Joe’s Stone Crab, Miami Beach
SETTING: This palace of crustacean claws goes into turbo mode during the magical early-December week that is Art Basel Miami Beach. While new-school spots like Carbone and Delilah lure in the buzz-seekers and crypto-adjacent clients, real heads know the ideal is this Miami landmark, now in its 111th season.
SCENE: There are limited reservations now thanks to Covid, but the bulk of the restaurant is reserved for walk-ins, who usually face an hour-plus wait. Slipping the maître d’ a couple cheeky Benjamins may help speed things along, but you still need to follow the protocol. Sitting at the bar, sipping a cocktail, and watching billionaire collectors waiting for a table and hearing their names called throughout the entire restaurant—it’s worth the price of admission.
ORDER: Seven select claws per person, chopped salad, hash browns, creamed spinach, full stop. It’s a big menu, but that’s all you need. Art Basel CEO Noah Horowitz made us get the fried chicken once though, out of pure curiosity—it was pretty good!
Paris Bar, Berlin
SETTING: Founded in the ’60s as a Gallic snails-and-steaks joint deep in the heart of postwar Berlin, Paris Bar immediately became a celeb magnet—and then an art-star magnet—in the ’80s and ’90s, when Cologne and Berlin became the hottest gallery towns in Europe.
SCENE: In the ’80s: Kippenberger, Oehlen, Polke, Lüpertz. In the 2000s: Bruno Brunnet, the proprietor of Contemporary Fine Arts, with Dash Snow, Cosima von Bonin, Peter Doig. Now: any of the young dealers making their mark on Berlin, and the artists that worship Paris Bar.
ORDER: Steak frites. Martinis.
The Wolseley, London
SETTING: Ensconced on Piccadilly, just steps away from the Ritz hotel, this grand, hundred-year-old building wears its history as a luxury car showroom and bank branch lightly, and for the past quarter-century has been a bastion of understated opulence at all hours of the day. Lucian Freud ate at the same table nearly every night until his death.
SCENE: Traders from the financial markets mix with collectors meeting their Christie’s handlers and ladies who lunch, from breakfast 'til supper. During major auction weeks or when the Frieze circus is in town, it’s chockablock with major dealers and art-market makers. While there is no dress code listed on the website, we wouldn’t dare go here without a jacket and tie—Savile Row is just around the corner in case your wardrobe veers a bit too nouveau. Or if you’re from LA.
ORDER: The food is a bit beside the point here, but we’ve had good success with the oysters and other crustaceans, the serviceable beef tartare, and a surprisingly good burger.
St. John, London
SETTING: Started by Fergus Henderson, Trevor Gulliver, and Jon Spiteri in the mid-’90s, it’s ground zero of nose-to-tail cooking. Bourdain really, really liked this place.
SCENE: If Sadie Coles hasn’t rented out the place for a private dinner, she’s probably eating at a corner table with some of her artists.
ORDER: Bone marrow. All the wines. If you’re lucky, Gulliver will pour you a glass himself.
Musso & Frank Grill, Los Angeles
SETTING: The oldest restaurant in Hollywood, a longtime home to exiled New York novelists trying to make a buck in Tinseltown. It eventually became a place where A-listers could stay under the radar by slinking into red leather booths and behind door-sized menus. Naturally, the exploding gallery circuit in LA has adopted the spot as its canteen of choice.
SCENE: Out-of-town New York dealers chasing memories of Old Hollywood, artists on the roster of galleries like Regen Projects, Karma, and Lisson.
ORDER: Nate went to Musso’s with Kenneth Anger once, and Anger ordered the lamb chops with mint jelly. So, that.
Barney’s Beanery, Los Angeles
SETTING: The original post-opening drinks spot for the Ferus Gallery gang, where dealer Irving Blum introduced Angelenos to New York Pop art figures—Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein—while also giving first shows to a murderer’s row of local young talent: Ed Ruscha, Larry Bell, Billy Al Bengston, Ed Moses, etc. Not to mention the fact that Edward Kienholz made an artwork, The Beanery, 1965, that’s a life-size replica of Barney’s Beanery. It’s in the permanent collection of the Stedelijk.
SCENE: It’s leaned into more of a sports bar vibe in recent decades, and was discovered by Gen-Zers post-Covid who felt the need to TikTok their way through the dive. But it’s also just a decent spot to grab a beer in the middle of the day and take in the history.
ORDER: Pub grub. Wings.
Mr Chow, Los Angeles
SETTING: Founder Michael Chow is an artist and his Beverly Hills restaurant has some of the most spectacular decor you will ever see, courtesy of Chow himself. Jeffrey Deitch has called his enterprise a “total work of art.”
SCENE: Sure, the billionaires and movie stars are there on a regular basis; all you need is a Getty Images search to tell you that. But it’s the night of Larry Gagosian’s annual pre-Oscars Mr Chow dinner—which happens to play host to what seems like every movie star and billionaire, not to mention the entire Los Angeles art scene—that we look forward to the most. It’s probably the best dinner of the year.
ORDER: Crispy beef, Mr Chow spareribs, Peking duck. The food here is extremely good. Be very wary of someone trying to be contrarian. They are wrong.
Captain’s Bar, Hong Kong
SETTING: Step back in time to a place where it feels like the handover never happened. One of the most beautiful curved wooden bars in all the world, with a luxurious leather armrest to lean on while leafing through the FT and hoisting a frosted silver tankard full of the bar’s signature beer.
SCENE: British expats from the worlds of finance and media who are longing for their club back in London flock to this elegant spot in the lobby of the Mandarin Oriental hotel nightly. When Art Basel Hong Kong rolls into town, it becomes a bacchanalia of jet-lagged Euro and American dealer types trying to remember what day it is and which “museum” has a reserve on that one work.
ORDER: It’s a bar—have a drink. They do have finger bowls of salty snacks that rival Bemelmans Bar. If you are trying life on life’s terms, the non-alcoholic Gunner is an ancient house concoction of ginger beer and grenadine that packs a sugary, restorative punch. The tankard Benjamin stole in 2018 is the only souvenir he’s ever thrown in the Rimowa that he is happy to still have.
THE NEW SPOTS
The Audley Public House, London
SETTING: It’s got the bones of the 1888 pub that’s been there for centuries and the sheen of an owner with a day job selling $5 million paintings out of a white cube.
SCENE: Iwan and Manuela Wirth, co-founders of Artfarm and the global art-dealing enterprise Hauser & Wirth, reopened this pub in Mayfair in 2022, after a full refurbish of the classic space. Its resemblance to any other semi-posh Mount Street spot dissipates when you realize a lot of artists have work on the walls, and maybe one or two of them are drinking a Guinness at the bar as well.
ORDER: For god’s sake, beer. Maybe a lamb scrumpet if you have too many—the meat is from Durslade Farm, also owned by Artfarm.
Rochelle Canteen, London
SETTING: While their husbands, the aforementioned Fergus and Spiteri, opened St. John, Melanie Arnold and Margot Henderson transformed a burgeoning catering business into Rochelle Canteen. From the start, Chef Arnold has overseen the kitchen in an impossibly charming place tucked behind an old Victorian
schoolhouse.
SCENE: Lunchtime-only vibes from the arguably greater half of London’s most acclaimed chef couple. Less offal than at St. John, but just the right amount of guttural cooking. East Side artists and the dealers who show them come in for what’s become an essential midday meal.
ORDER: It’s seasonal, so ask your server, but all the greens are excellent. You’ll regret whatever main you get because there’s always another one that’s just as good.
Contramar, Mexico City
SETTING: An open-air room in the heart of Roma with an iconic blue and black fish-skeleton mural that has been on your Instagram feed dozens of times. Gabriela Cámara founded Contramar in a former warehouse at 22 years old, an unheard-of age in an industry where restaurateurs spend decades paying their dues before going off on their own. Vogue later called Camera’s decision to open Contramar “one of the great confidence moves in the history of restaurants.”
SCENE: Large tables of impeccably dressed locals mix it up with visiting hipsters for lunches that start at 1 p.m. and often don’t end until 6. If you’re not a regular, good luck getting a last-minute table during the week of Zona Maco, but try hitting up your Sotheby’s contact—they usually book out the whole restaurant for their clients the afternoon before the fair opens. Even when it’s not Maco, it’s said to be bad business for a CDMX art dealer to not have their Friday lunch at Contramar.
ORDER: Everything. Benjamin has never had a bad seafood dish here. Nate was astonished when the Internet-famous tostadas de atún were not just a viral TikTok dish but one of the most insane tuna dishes in the history of the fish. The pescado a la talla—get it half verde and half roja—is killer. Oh and that one garlic shrimp dish—tacos salteados de camarón. Make sure you leave room for the meringue with fresh strawberries to soak up the loads of mezcal you will no doubt imbibe.
Kappo Masa, New York
SETTING: Sure, it’s a sushi place co-owned by Larry Gagosian, in the building that houses one of the gallery’s New York outposts, and the entrance is through the Gagosian Shop. Yet it’s so much more than a canteen for the megalith’s staffers. Chef Masa makes it a destination-worthy sashimi bar, and it’s a happening lunch spot for people from all parts of the gallery scene and the art world at large.
SCENE: Benjamin has gone after an evening sale at Sotheby’s or an opening at the Guggenheim, and a lot of people from both had the same spot in mind. That being said, when Larry is sitting in the center booth, the whole room revolves around him, with friends coming up to pay their respects and check in with the boss.
ORDER: The rolls are outstanding, but don’t sleep on the duck fried rice with foie gras.
El Prado, Los Angeles
SETTING: A classic Echo Park dive bar that was long a post-concert spot for bands playing at the Echo across the street. At some point it got spiffed up a bit and became a wine bar, albeit a scruffy one. Owner Nick Fisher happened to be childhood friends with artist Calvin Marcus, and when he was offered a chance to buy the place, the longtime bartender commissioned some work from his artist pals and made it the East Side’s go-to post-opening watering hole.
SCENE: Some guy playing the old piano, plenty of people smoking out back, crowds spilling out to the tables on the sidewalk—and probably a good percentage of the city’s artist population on any given night. Another data point: El Prado showed up in the story that coined the term “vibe shift.”
ORDER: Ask Nick, a master winemaker himself, about what’s pouring well. And get a hot dog.
La Perle, Paris
SETTING: An unimpeachably on-point cafe in the perfect intersection in the Marais. Translation: manna for Francophilic art people.
SCENE: You will see people you know and half expect to be there, people you don’t know who look like they would absolutely be there, the occasional movie star, and not John Galliano.
ORDER: Cigarettes with a side of something to drink.
Altro Paradiso, New York
SETTING: A crowd-pleasing blockbuster spot from Estela chef Ignacio Mattos, who made a place that’s perfect for the big-budget buyout, or just a glass of wine and arancini at the bar.
SCENE: Chelsea dealers who wanted to stay on the West Side but come a bit downtown, Tribeca dealers meeting uptown collectors at a place that is a bit more grown-up than Walker’s. (We also love Walker’s!)
ORDER: Skip the cacio e pepe for a rich pasta with bottarga, and do not miss the fennel salad—it’s one of the world’s greatest.
