KIITO-SAN
While mourning continues for M. Wells Dinette, which will soon close after more than six glorious years serving as the restaurant of New York’s MoMA PS1, the Kunsthalle in Queens has announced its successor: Mina’s by chef Mina Stone.
The restaurant, Stone’s first, will serve “creative Mediterranean-inspired cuisine,” per the museum, with seasonal ingredients being a focus on its frequently changing menu.
Stone is a fixture in the New York art world, cooking gallery dinners for Gavin Brown’s Enterprise and lunches for the studio of Urs Fischer. In 2015 she released a book of recipes, Cooking for Artists, on Fischer’s imprint Kiito-San.
Asked to describe Stone’s meals in a 2016 interview, Fischer was rhapsodic. “I sit down, and like seeing a good work of art, I cannot do anything but enjoy it,” he said. “At times, her meals are true masterpieces! It’s like eating your favorite work of art. Shortly after, it’s all gone. Like a mirage.”
Artist Alex Eagleton will be handling interiors for Mina’s with architect Isobel Herbold, and “plant design” is coming from Fleurotica. Molly McIver is in charge of natural wine.
There’s no official opening date as of yet, but the plan for now is that M. Wells Dinette will close at the end of the month, renovations will take place in March, and Mina’s will open sometime in April.
Raw horse meat, which M. Wells Dinette once proposed serving, will presumably not be on the menu. But let’s hope that Stone’s olive oil cake is. Featured in Cooking for Artists, it is a lusciously moist creation, filled with citrus, spice, and a dash of cognac—an ideal treat to accompany any art exhibition.