Plates artfully done: Modern dining at MOMA

NEW YORK — Pablo Picasso’s radical sculptures and Salvador Dali’s experimental films are among the June offerings at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, but that’s not why we’re here.

We’re sampling a different offering - fine dining in a museum restaurant, which happens to be the Modern in MOMA. Restaurateur Danny Meyer and his Union Square Hospitality Group are the creative forces behind the Modern, an elegant establishment with a view of the museum’s sculpture garden and the only museum restaurant in the world with a Michelin star.

We’re seated near a garden window. The service is pleasant and speedy. We order.

The first food to arrive is an amazing pea soup with slow-cooked barley, a Parmesan tuile and cream.

The flavor of the peas is intense and mild at the same time. “It’s a simple thing,” restaurant chef Gabriel Kreuther says in an accent that reveals his Alsatian roots - a heritage he shares with a former employer, restaurateur extraordinaire Jean-Georges Vongerichten. “We use French peas that we take out of their pods. We use the pods in the vegetable broth, and we pass the peas through a juicer. We mix the puree with the broth and add a little butter, cream and pepper and salt … The barley gives it a little texture.”

It definitely beats a stale sandwich and a bag of chips - the staple offering at museums the world over.

“It’s a trend…. It has become a big part of the art museum experience to have a good restaurant,” says Ford Bell, president and chief executive of the American Association of Museums in Washington. “It just rounds out the cultural experience.”

Museum restaurant consultant Arthur M. Manask agrees. “In the past, going to a museum was like going to the ballpark,” Mr. Manask says. “You expect to pay at least $5 for a lousy hot dog. … Traditionally, museums were not where you dined.”

Mr. Manask says the change began slowly, about 10 years ago. Big-name chefs started becoming part of the museum dining scene. At the Denver Art Museum in 1997, Kevin Taylor opened Palettes, a fine-dining restaurant with entrees such as Colorado lamb rib chops with French green lentils, garlic spinach and a jus of red wine, onion and fresh mint.

In 2004, Mr. Kreuther was recruited to head up the Modern after having worked as the executive chef at Ritz-Carlton New York and as chef de cuisine at Restaurant Jean Georges, also in Manhattan.

“It was a challenge. … People at the beginning were very surprised to have good food at a museum restaurant,” Mr. Kreuther says.

In the past four years, attitudes and expectations have changed, and the Modern is packed most nights. Museum restaurant operators from as far away as London visit to see and learn how it’s all done.

“They’re prospecting here because it’s proven that it works,” Mr. Kreuther says.

Along with popular support and interest from museum restaurant operators worldwide, the restaurant has received numerous awards and glowing reviews. It was the James Beard Foundation’s Best New Restaurant in the United States in 2006, and the New York Times has given it three stars. A 2007 Zagat survey calls it “Divine.”

That aptly could describe the Modern’s amazing suckling pig with parsnip puree, roasted pineapple and jus scented with cardamom; it is an adventurous flavor-and-texture combination that worked perfectly. The pineapple was sweet and sour, the puree mild and smooth, and the pig supertender.

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